The regional finals of the e-Yantra Ideas competition was held here recently at the Dr. G.R. Damodaran College of Science. The competition is one of the flagship projects of the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s under its National Mission on Education through ICT and implemented by the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay.
A college release says that students of colleges where the e-Yantra Labs were set up participated in the competition. The colleges where the labs were set up had to register up to four project ideas, which would be screened in the first round.
The students whose ideas were selected for the finals participated in the competition in the college in Coimbatore. Other regional finals were held in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Pune.
The objective of the programme was to train students in robotics and embedded systems and the competition was part of the programme, the release adds.
Robotics, of late, is picking up in colleges in Coimbatore, says R.S. Kumar, principal, Kumaraguru College of Technology. Students of Mechatronics engineering who study both mechanical and electronics were more suited for robotics.
Various engineering associations, companies that are into automation and robotics companies sponsor competitions that are held across India. Industry associations like the Confederation of Indian Industry are also hosting competition in the field, he says and refers to the one they recently held at the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore.
The impact of the competitions is that final year students are choosing projects in automation and robotics. The college has an imported robot, humanoid, which the students will have to programme.
Karthik Madhavan
thcbereporting@gmail.com
