The team from G. H. Raisoni College of Engineering, Nagpur, which designed a prototype of a unique garbage picker machine, was declared the winner at the grand finale of Smart India Hardware Hackathon 2018 which concluded at National Institute of Technology – Tiruchi (NITT) on Friday.
‘The Gladiators,’ team from the college comprising Nihal Wargantiwar, Mahesh Shende, Ayush Raut, Anshul Chinchalkar and Nitin Parshuramkar presented a prototype of a garbage collecting machine based only on mechanical system and having a capacity to collect 20–30 kg of waste at a time. They won the first prize with a cash reward of ₹1 lakh.
Team Slick comprising students of Techno India NJR Institute of Technology, Rajasthan, won the second prize and were awarded ₹75,000 cash for designing a prototype of ‘slurry and plastic brick’, while the third prize of ₹50,000 was awarded to the team ‘Water Cops’ from Moradabad Institute of Technology for coming up with a prototype of ‘Smart Wash Bin’.
The other three teams that made to the finals were Team Lokmanya from Jain College of Engineering, which came up with a ‘Self-powered biogas plant with solar tracing’, Team ‘Logistics’ from Vardhaman College in Hyderabad, which came up with ‘Automatic drainage cleaning system and team ‘Electrical Levellers’ from Kuppam Engineering College in Andhra Pradesh, which devised ‘Smart drainage cleaning system’.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development was working closely with the Department of Science and Technology to explore the possibility of hand-holding the winning teams into becoming startups with the support from Technology Business incubators.
