Chennai: Students from various Indian Institutes of Technology and higher educational institutions across the country will put their lunar rover model to test at Shaastra 2014, the four-day IIT-M's technical festival, which begins on January 4.
As an initiative to help Team Indus, the only Indian team to get shortlisted by Google to compete for the global level best lunar rover model competition, Shaastra organisers have come up with a contest to select the best model from among their own competitors.
Providing details about the technical festival, IIT-M director Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi said that students had come up with several innovative competitions, including the best lunar rover one, for which they had converted the institute's open air theatre (OAT) into a lunar surface with several obstacles.
"The lunar rover model needs to run continuously for 30 minutes based on the parameters set by Team Indus," he said.
Prof. L.S. Ganesh, Dean (Students), said that students from various IITs would exhibit their projects as part of Shaastra.
"We have five major projects this year-radio frequency-based anti-theft device, level indicator for water tanks, students’ attendance tracking mobile app, safety design for large oil tankers and graphical user interface for micro controllers in fridge and washing machine," he said.
As part of the Shaastra lecture series, noted names like Michael Meyer, lead scientist with NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Project and Bikash Sinha, Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister and others will share their insights with students, Prof. Mahesh Panchagnula, Advisor (Co-curricular Affairs) at IIT-M said. There were prizes worth over Rs 24 lakh waiting to be given away.
