The Amrita School of Engineering at Amritapuri campus was recently awarded the 2010-2011 IEEE Student Enterprise Award.
Only four colleges worldwide were chosen for this prestigious award, including Budapest University of Technology and Economics; Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; and University of Queensland, Australia, in addition to Amrita.
The award was bestowed on Amrita in recognition of the efforts of Amrita B.Tech. students, Ramesh N. Nair, Sai Manoj and Mithun Mohan for their project titled Gesture Based Wheelchair Control for the Physically Challenged.
The students received a cash prize of US $1500, which will be used towards project expenses.
“The physically challenged and elderly people find it difficult to move a wheelchair without help from others,” explained Br. Rajesh Kannan, who guided the students. “We designed this system to be used with a wheelchair in order to help them move inside their own homes without help or external aid.”
“Our gesture control system for wheelchairs is useful for all those who have lost the ability to use their limbs due to paralysis, congenital birth abnormalities or old age,” he added.
The usefulness of the system has impressed many, who have nominated this student innovation for top prizes in several international and national forums.
The IEEE Foundation provided funding of US $ 7520 to be used over 2011-2012 to further enhance the prototype model.
In 2010, the project received recognition in the Intel Embedded Challenge contest, which saw participation from 2500+ teams from all over India. Only 36 teams made it to the final round, and this project was chosen as the best project for the Intel Employees’ Gold Medal.
The project has also been short-listed for the final round of the 2011 IEEE President’s Change the World Contest; results are yet to be announced.
Two conferences at the Amritapuri campus will showcase this gesture based control system — the International Conference on Wireless Technologies for Humanitarian Relief, December 18-21, 2011 and IEEE International Conference on Technology Enhanced Education, January 3-5, 2012.
The project began in 2010 when B.Tech. students of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Arjun Askok, Nived Krishnan, Daniel C.J. and Arun Kumar, conceived of the system as their final-year project.
After they graduated, other students took their work forward, with the guidance of Br. Rajesh.
October 1, 2011
School of Engineering, Amritapuri
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