JOIN USIt was a proud moment for a few final-year students of the undergraduate department of MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology at the recently held ‘Open Day’ project exhibition on the campus.
The brightest minds of the college were given a chance to demonstrate their graduation projects and promote their conceptual ideas to leading decision-makers in the industry. The exhibition showcased nearly 250 technical project created by 1,300 students from 14 different departments, including electrical sciences, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and chemical engineering.
Harshitha R, a final-year telecommunications student and prize-winner at the exhibition, presented her project titled ‘Implementation of a wireless sensor network for precision agriculture’ with her teammates Sowjanya and Savitha. “How it works is that sensors are deployed in the fields and farmers monitor the soil parameters using the internet. The project is being carried out in association with Ernet-India and it won us second place in our department,” she informed. “It was a good learning experience for us and it was great that our efforts were rewarded in this way.
Parents and students attended the exhibition and it was nice explaining our work to them. But it was even more helpful to interact with people from Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Bharat Electronics (BEL) who came to our stalls and gave us inputs on how to improve our projects,” she added.
Another unique project that stood out in the exhibition was an ‘Automated real-time vision-based security system for ATMs’, which was developed by a team of four electronics
and communication students, namely Nitish S Prabhu, Thejas N Kesari, Eshwargowda MN and Ajaya HS.
“The motivation for this idea was the November 2013 ATM attack in Bangalore. The culprit has still not been caught because the camera was on top and did not capture his face clearly. So we worked on various algorithms and put a top and front camera to detect facial features and track movements once the person enters the ATM,” explained Nitish.
He added that working as a team was tough initially but they eventually got into the groove.
“We received a lot of positive feedback from visitors as we focused on a critical issue. But it also helped us get an idea of how projects work as a team. There were compromises made and a lot of brain-storming sessions but it all turned out better than expected,” he said, noting that the project placed second in their department.
Also organised as part of the technical event was an exhibition showing the current and future technology being developed by leading industries and research labs in the fields of defence, space, aerospace, automobiles, solar and consumer electronics.