A racing car, a driverless vehicle and a Mars rover: IIT- Madras’ repertoire has it all to compete against the best in the world.
Three student teams from the Centre for Innovation (CFI) — a 24x7 student lab of the IIT-M set up in 2008 to encourage engineering students to come up with new products — have qualified for international competitions with their vehicles, self-designed and self-built.
Raftar, the team which has built a formula race car at a cost of about ₹15 lakh with guidance from professors and sponsorships from various corporates, will participate in the Formula Student Germany (FSG) 2018, a popular international competition for students that promotes research in multiple disciplines.
The Raftar is the only one among 18 Indian entries to qualify for this event. The team is among the sixty combustion teams to successfully register out of 173 teams worldwide.
Started in 2012, Raftar participates in different competitions every year, and in 2017, its race car won a prize for fuel efficiency in an international event, although it could only come 15th overall.
A ground cart, a Mars rover
Team Abhiyaan of CFI has built a low-cost vehicle capable of navigating autonomously via GPS way-points, and gather information about the surroundings.
The ground vehicle has been built at a cost of ₹11.2 lakh. The vehicle has built to provide assistance in the areas of agriculture and defence. It has qualified for Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition at Oakland University, Michigan, US.
The Mars rover vehicle has been built by Team Anveshak and the vehicle has qualified for University Rover Challenge in the US.
Corporate funding
“On an average, about 600 students will be involved in some innovation at CFI,” says B Ravindran, Dean, CFI. “We don’t spend too much money here except providing infrastructure. Students themselves take the lead to get support from corporates,” says Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT-M.
Institutional support
But IIT-M plans to build world-class infrastructure for CFI.
The institute has already got some funding from its alumni.
The proposed facility will be a three-storey centre built over 30,000 sq ft, for which approvals are being sought, he adds.