A three-day Make-a-thon took place at the School of Electrical Engineering, VIT University, Vellore, recently with three different teams winning the first three prizes and the fourth prize share by teams as consolation prize.

In this unique event the students, designers and hackers collaborate for limited time to deliver solutions to various challenges proposed by industries, medical practitioners, researchers and development organizations competition.

“The purpose of the Make-a-thon is to motivate students and the industry as well as academia to interact and innovate with each other. Here the problem of the industry is undertaken by the students as a challenge and they create a prototype of the solution as well as a business plan,” explains Dr.P.Arulmozhivarman, Professor and Dean, School of Electrical Engineering, VIT University, Vellore.

This year, the Make-a-thon saw 306 registered participants that were finally shortlisted by the organizers to 180 registrants. In this, students of VIT University from the first year to third year engineering courses, who were divided into 43 teams under six different categories.

Categories of judgment
The teams were judged for their solutions in the fields of Energy & Environmental Monitoring, Robotics and Industrial automation, Smart Agriculture, Smart Energy Harvesting, IoT and Sensors for Smart city, data security and networks, Public Awareness.

Of the 43 teams, at the end of 36 hrs of Make-a-thon, 40 teams were qualified.

The industry collaborators for the competition included Inphase, Banglore, Vi Microsystems, Enthu Technologies, Johnson Control, Pune, Danfoss, Janitri, Bosch, Cardea labs, and GLR Laboratories, Chennai.

Industry experts and professors of various disciplines reviewed the Make-a-thon projects presented by the students and finally 10 best projects were adjudged the finalists of the Make-a-thon.

Prizes and awards

Interestingly, students who excel in this competition are offered internships in some of the best companies from the six industries.

And in order to motivate and help them innovate VIT University also awards Rs 10,000 to the first prize winner, Rs 7,500 to the second prize winner and Rs 5,000 to the third prize winner. As for the fourth prize winner, they receive a consolation prize.

Dr. P.Arulmozhivarman explains, “The top 10 teams are awarded an internship and the participating students are from the first to the final year. Plus, the university provides all the machine tools and fabrication tools for the participants to work easily and effortlessly.”

Here’s a look at the teams and their innovations.

First prize : Team Vinnovate - Won Rs.10000/-

Problem Statement : Gamification of ECG (Proposed by Cardea Labs).

Team members :

Apoorv Bandi14BIT0068
Amit Kumar14BEE0181
Himanshu Manghani - 14BEE0234
Divyansh - 14BIT0072

About project developed : Students developed and demonstrated a novel method to gamify ECG output. Person wears a VR headset and ECG electrodes are attached to his chest. In headset, person can see imaginary objects in real world (like game Pokemon GO). This can make exercising more interactive and fun. Based on how fast person is running, output of ECG will change and this will affect the points earned by player. It can be noted that developed game is based upon one of the emerging technologies known as AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality).

Second Prize : Matrix
Problem Statement : Smart Agriculture-Urban farming- Won Rs. 7500/-

Team Members :
Nanda Kishor Panda - 15BEE0117 H. Bharadwaj - 15BEE0170 Milind Kejriwal - 15BEC0575 Saransh Dabas - 15BCE0834 Pranau Kumar - 15BCE2055

About the project : A smart crop management system, where different requirements of a crop like water, fertilizers and others are sensed by sensors and provided as needed. With decreasing farming lands and increasing urbanisation, this has potential to revolutionise the way we grow our foods.

Third Prize : TFD Energizers Won Rs. 5000/-
Problem Statement : Clean Energy using Hybrid Renewable Systems
Team members :
Amandeep Vaish-15BEC0086
Mahima Goyen-15BEE0082
Nikhil Kaile-16BCL0084T.
Dhiraj-16BIS0137

Description : Our idea includes making a hybrid renewable energy system for a country like india with tropical and extreme climatic conditions which offers only one source of natural energy at a time. Through our hybrid system we have aimed at harnessing the solar and wind energy in combination to provide maximum power generation 24×365. In addition to that both our solar and wind panels are smart and self orienting to further maximise the power harnessed.

4th Prize: Consolation prizes
RMS Value :
Manav Rajvanshi 15BCE0737
Subarna Pal 15BEI0080
Ritesh Ranjan Singh 15BEC0790
Project title : Speech and Gesture Technology for people
Description : Our project focuses on controlling electronic devices like laptops, Computers using gestures and user's voice commands. The gesture technology is a boon for a differently able audience as they can have access to a whole new technological world merely by the head gestures, the users can command their computers to perform certain tasks by 'speaking' to their systems, hence providing a hands free experience.
Autobots:
Apoorva Mittal-16BBT0006
Jishnu nair-14BBT0134
Soundaram veerappan-16BBT0041
Shibu antony-14BBT0107
Problem Statement : A way to alert a mother in home about early stage of Neonatal Jaundice in order to get an early treatment to prevent newborn mortality/morbidity. (Proposed by Dr Arun Agarwal)

Description : Amperometric biosensor for neonatal jaundice diagnosis based on the electron release by bilirubin on getting oxidised. Team developed a simple paper based sensor based on Graphene, that can be used for early detection of Jaundice in neonatal. This idea has potential to save millions of lives all over the globe, specially in low socio-economic countries2

At the Inphase, Bangalore offer internship opportunities for the Energy related problems picked by top finalist, GLR laboratories, and Janitri offer internship for the Medical device development teams. Similarly all the top finalist received offer from various other industries to scale up for product development and funding supports.

Dr. SS Murugan, Managing director, GLR laboratories Pvt. Ltd, Chennai and Shri. Pannallal Biswas, CEO, Inphase Power Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore distributed the prizes. Dr. P.Arulmozhivarman , Professor and Dean, School of Electrical Engineering were present.