It was when his relative lost his arms in a road accident that Anand Ganesh, an engineering student, decided to use his technical knowledge to help persons with disabilities become mobile without having to depend on others. His tricycle for the disabled that can be operated using one's feet, is one of the projects on display at ‘Drestein,' a three-day national-level technical fest that got under way at Saveetha Engineering College here on Tuesday.
Thousands of students from various engineering colleges across Tamil Nadu are participating in it. Addressing the students, chief guest Jayanthan Solomon Thomas, Asia –Pacific Oracle University practice director, urged the students to gain expertise over . “An industry-ready engineer is one who is ever ready to learn new things, and is able to adapt well to any new environment,” he said.
Noting that “emotion drives innovation”, he said many of the projects represent human acumen in technology. While students from Prist University have developed an SMS-based controller that will help people regulate electrical appliances through texting, a group of girls from Kongu Engineering College have designed an energy-saving street light system that is aimed at reducing power consumption by regulating the dimness of light according to the time.
Pearson Education India president Vivek Govil emphasised the importance of keeping pace with the world that was changing fast and the need for thinking of ways to get ahead of it. “It's a strange anomaly that while on the one hand, companies are trying hard to recruit the best people, there are many young people vying for the best jobs. It's very much possible to fall into the trap of complacency,” he said.
Saveetha Engineering College principal R. Venkataswamy said than a national symposium of this sort facilitated a healthy exchange of information and interaction among people with different ideas.
Exebot – a workshop on robotics, touted as a ‘spa for robotrix' had mechanised cars playing football and humanoid mechanical creatures set to compete in wrestling. Workshops, paper presentations and project displays on coding, ‘cloud computing' and ‘basic hacking'; programmes on multimedia and design; discussions on business and management issues; group discussions and presentations on various non-technical topics are part of the fest.
