Open House showcases student innovations at IIT-Madras

60 projects developed by various teams of students were featured at the event

The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras’ Centre for Innovation (CFI) held its annual Open House, featuring over 60 innovative student projects. The event showcased autonomous vehicles, rockets and the electric Formula racecar developed by the student team Raftar.

The CFI is a round-the-clock innovation lab with 13 clubs, four competitive teams and over 700 members, who apply their engineering knowledge to come up with products.

Institute director V. Kamakoti, who launched a new website for the CFI on the occasion, said the CFI not only provided a platform for young innovators to showcase their creations but also served as an inspiration for other young students to innovate.

Nilesh Vasa, dean of students, said the student-driven facility inspired students to work creatively and collaboratively. The CFI team Abhiyaan’s autonomous vehicle ‘Bolt’, team Abhyuday’s rocket, team Avishkar’s hyperloop, a sports science and analytics project in collaboration with Sports Science Centre of Excellence, a bird diverter project in partnership with the Wildlife Institute of India and projects on blockchain technology were on display.

Prabhu Rajagopal, faculty advisor of CFI-IIT-Madras, said nearly 10% of the students of the institute are engaged with the CFI, cutting across the undergraduate-postgraduate divide. Quite a few teams and projects had graduated to form start-ups, making Open House the largest calendar event of the CFI and showcasing the best student projects of the year.

Asokan Tondiyath, faculty advisor of team Anveshak, said the team had steadily progressed in the past three years and was in the process of making ‘Foresight’ with custom-made wheels, a lightweight manipulator and a state-of-the-art electronic system.

Among the new developments is the chennaiwaterlogging.org platform that enables users/public to report details such as location of floods and water depth and add photos of waterlogged sites with a description. These reports are used to develop a real-time flood map.