Engineering students from colleges across the country participated in the second National Inter-collegiate Engineering Design Contest, organised by Quest Global Engineering (QGE) here.
The participants had to make a presentation on their final year B.Tech projects, followed by a demonstration of working models during the event on Friday.
Ajay Prabhu, chief operating officer, QGE, said that compared with last year, there was a 70 per cent increase in participation.
The competition began in October last year. Over 200 applications were received. After an internal evaluation, nine were shortlisted to take part in the finals — from Hyderabad, Warangal, Coimbatore, Hubli, Tumkur, Belgaum, Manipal and Chennai (students from one college were absent).
Presentations were based on topics related to aerospace, mechanical engineering, electrical electronics, and industrial engineering.
The jury members included Gopalakrishna M. Kamath, stress specialist at Bombardier Aerospace, Bangalore; Gopalan Jagadeesh, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc.); C.V. Venugopalan, Chief Engineer, Quest, Bangalore; and U. Chandrashekhar, Additional Director at Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE).
The winners
‘Design and development of multilink spatial hyper redundant robot’ presented by ‘Tech Asimovs’ of PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, won the first prize of Rs. 1 lakh. The project showcased how robots can be used in place of humans in cases such as nuclear disasters.
The runners-up were team ‘Borewell’ from Gogte Institute of Technology, Belgaum, for their presentation on ‘Energy-efficient groundwater drill’ (with the help of a device comprising a pulley, pump, winch and tube, efficient groundwater drilling that conserves energy and reduces human effort is possible) and the ‘Soaring Eagles’ from Siddganga Institute of Technology, Tumkur, for their presentation on ‘Design and fabrication of radio-controlled surveillance vehicles’. The two teams received cash prizes of Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 25,000 respectively.
Popular automobile designer Dilip Chhabria, who presented the trophies and cash prizes to the winners, said: “Today’s inventions and innovations will impact the way our future evolves. We never had such platforms where we, as students, could hone our skills and seek out opportunities to showcase our talent.”
