Open House 2018 – The 14th Open House of IIT Delhi started with an introductory lecture by Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao, Director IIT Delhi. The main agenda of Director was focused on research and IIT Delhi’s position and future goals on it. The high number of patents(approx. 100 per year) and 38th rank in the world in terms of research output gathered public attention. He also spent a few minutes describing the reasons for the lesser rank of IIT Delhi among the best institutions in the world and also ways to improve it. The reasons listed by him were a less number of foreign students and no foreign faculty which leads to our negligible score in the international aspect of ranking. Prof. Rao also motivated the students present, thereby giving the importance of research and also taking the research to the public by developing products and commercializing them. The newly opened Department of Design was also covered a bit in the inaugural ceremony by Director and he told that the purpose of this department was to train creative people and also mentioned that its admission will be a kind of creative and visualization test and not take place through JEE. The following are a few of the highlights of the 14th Open House.
Avalokan – SIT Building
SmartCane Device The SmartCane device is an electronic travel aid for persons with visual impairment and it fits on the top of a normal cane. Smartcane warns the users about the presence of obstacles especially in the region between the knee and the head height because normal cane can’t help with such obstacles. It uses ultrasonic sensors to detect obstacles up to 3 meters and conveys information about the distance through distinct vibratory patterns. So, by using this device people can move safely without bumping into obstacles. It has now covered almost the whole country in terms of its outreach. It is now available at an affordable price of INR 3200 through a network of 40 organizations throughout the country. Even Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is now making it easy to get this product to Low-income group by its ADIP Scheme.
OnBoards OnBoard is an RF-based system that identifies the route number of buses through a query based transaction and triggers auditory cues from the bus to enable the user to navigate towards the bus entrance. It helps visually impaired persons to comfortably board and deboard buses, due to this use of auditory cues. It has now been successfully tested on more than 25 best buses in Mumbai and the results are amazing.
Braille Tutoring Application This device helps teach Braille to visually impaired people through an application in a fun and interactive way. The project also aims to provide a second user interface that can be used by teachers to add and customize tutorials to the needs of the students. The outputs of the instrument are Tactile, Visual and Sound Based giving the user an all-around immersive experience into the world of Braille.
Tactile Graphics Tactile graphics are images that consist of raised lines and textures produced on swell papers, PVC sheets, and embossed sheets. This helps VI people to understand images easily which is a great plus point in the educational aspect. The raised lines and textures are made via molds of specific shapes and things embossed on them. Technology has been developed to produce molds using 3D printing as well. High-quality affordable books on physiotherapy, Indian Maps and Yoga Books are produced using this technology.
LHC Stalls:
Renewable Energy Storage in Redox Flow Battery: Vanadium Redox Flow Battery(VRFB), is a potential technology capable of providing a clean and sustainable storage of renewable energy. It has a long cycle life because of the components used in it and thus it is suitable for a wide range of applications. The need to develop a renewable energy storage device came from the irregular and unsteady nature of renewable energy sources. Also, lead batteries have short cycle life and lead recycling requires a novel battery. The features of VRFB such as long cycle life and independent scalability of power and energy density enables it to become a potential technology.
Design and Development of Active prosthetic leg: The constant mechanical properties of passive prostheses do not allow the knee joint motions to be similar to that of a normal person. On the other hand, Active prostheses provide improved motion but are costly, heavy and consume large energy. Markets have seen very few designs of Semi-Active prostheses. The Magnetorheological(MR) fluid has the properties that can be employed to provide variable damping in prostheses. The MR fluid provides controllable variable damping, that is suitable for prostheses.
ROBOMUSE 5.0: With the features of Tele-operation, Autonomous SLAM based navigation, Intelligent Path Planning and Human safety alarm, Robomuse was developed as a base for a wide array of research and applications. Latest in the series of in-house robots developed at IITD, it is an amalgam of everything best the market has to offer. It can reach a top speed of 2 m/s. It has applications in towing and carrying without any human intervention.