Archit Agarwal, a final-year student of B.Tech in electronics engineering at the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, is one of the winners of this year’s Gandhian Young Technological Innovation awards. The winners were presented with their awards at the Festival of Innovations, held at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Archit won in the ‘Cutting-edge Technology’ category, for his plug-in device for cars, called the On-Board Diagnostic Data Analysis System (OBDAS). It processes data collected by the various electronic units in a car, and then passes on valuable information to car owners, and auto insurance or automobile companies.
For example, OBDAS can send the location of the vehicle to emergency services in case an accident occurs. Or, auto insurance companies can use the system to obtain car usage history and take accurate decisions on insurance policies. The information can be accessed anywhere, anytime, as it is uploaded to a cloud server. Archit discusses the lead up to the project completion, how it feels to be a GYTI award winner and his plans in the field.
Experience
Going to Rashtrapati Bhavan and receiving this prestigious award in the presence of the President was an overwhelming experience.
The competition was extremely challenging with close to 13,000 projects from over 500 colleges across India.
Product
Today, all cars have electronic control units (ECUs), and each ECU governs a certain part of the vehicle. There are ECUs for engine load, engine fuel temperature, the suspension system, and many more. In fact, there are more than 25 ECUs in a car. And through these ECUs, we can extract around 200 parameters about the car and its performance.
These can be a valuable source of information. OBDAS fetches these parameters from the car in real-time and transforms them into useful insights using certain algorithms. These can be accessed for diagnostics, live, in the car, or online at another time. OBDAS can be plugged into any car, irrespective of the manufacturer.
Process
The complete product development process took six to seven months. I made three to four prototypes, each one involving hardware and design changes. The final product design was 3D-printed at UPES’ School of Design. What motivated me was my desire to make a real contribution to the world using the knowledge I have acquired so far.
Mentors
Over the last few years, I have been working under the mentorship of Dr. Sushabhan Choudhury, Dr. Rajesh Singh, and Ms. Anita Gehlot, of UPES’ Department of Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering. They have always motivated me and others to participate in innovation challenges. For the GYTI award too, they encouraged me to participate, on recognising the efforts I put in to develop OBDAS.
Looking forward
Some startups have contacted me about using OBDAS as an add-on to their services. But for now, I have been placed as a research and development engineer at Denso, a supplier of advanced automotive technology. I would like to learn more and build a career in the automotive electronics domain and contribute through organisations like Denso.
