A student team, “Team Bend” from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering (CSE), School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore campus, has won the IEEE Region 10 (Asia-Pacific region) Humanitarian Technology Project Competition 2019 held at the University of Indonesia, Depok on November 12, 2019. Since 2013, this international project competition has been held in conjunction with the premier IEEE R10 Humanitarian Technology Conference (HTC). Team Bend developed a Virtual Reality (VR) game to reduce lower back pain which is rampant among young professionals, especially for those working long hours in coding at IT and service companies. With the tagline for their project, “Gaming is not an addiction but a therapy”, “Team Bend” competed against student innovators from countries such as Japan, China, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia to emerge on top of this Engineering Festival for Humanity.
Dr. Sasangan Ramanathan, Dean, Faculty of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, said, “In recent times, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore (ASE-C), is witnessing substantial achievements by our students in premier international and national competitions and hackathons like HackHarvard Global Hackathon, TCS EngiNX Digital eminence challenge and Smart India Hackathon, all in 2019- resonating the fact that the next generation is gearing up to tackle future challenges. The students guided by their faculty, have worked together in pursuit of solutions, proving that the University is on the right path of innovative teaching-learning process. This victory is all the more special as the student innovation addresses the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of Health, true to our Chancellor, Amma’s vision of compassion-driven research.”
“Team Bend” members are Kishore Ramesh, Mohan Karthik V., Nehal Ram Surya B. and Ragul P., all students of the 2016-2020 batch of B.Tech Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) and mentored by Prof. Prashant R. Nair, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering (CSE), School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore campus. Earlier, “Team Bend” was ranked among the top 15 teams nation-wide in the Cisco ThingQbator IoT makerspace community program for universities. Another CSE student team, “Team Unorthodox Inc”, also mentored by Prof. Nair, participated in the finals and was ranked in the top 5 for this project competition. Team members were Rajasekar M., Manojkumar VK., Ragul S. V., Sudharshan S. and Udhay Aakash R., all students of 2017-2021 batch, B.Tech CSE.
