Kanpur: The Mechatronics Center in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT-Kanpur is another simple set of rooms – like many other rooms in its corridors. But the moment you enter it, there’s a small four-wheeled rover — not much bigger than the average dog — placed on the concrete floor on some sand and rocks.
“Oh, this? It’s the Chandrayaan rover,” says Ashish Dutta, dean of Digital Infrastructure and Automation. He brushes off further questions about the rover, calling it a very old development, which makes it interesting.
Rover is passed for Dutta. “Our work is done, it is up to the Indian Space Research Organization whether they will send the same rover again on the next mission,” he says. Rather he will talk about a 3D printed robotic arm that could revolutionize the rehabilitation of stroke patients.
Like Dutta’s department, IIT Kanpur has several others working on next-generation inventions – including robots that scour gas pipelines, security tags that are more secure than QR codes, and smartwatches for the blind . Some of these are awaiting testing, while some are ready for commercial use. As ThePrint reported last monthThere is even an artificial heart under development.
Behind inventions is a common desire.
“Our goal is to one day build a system that challenges natural living systems in the world,” says Professor Bishakh Bhattacharya of the Smart Materials, Structures and Systems (SMSS) Lab at the institute.
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Robotic arm that ‘reads’ brain waves
At the Center for Mechatronics, Datta has his eyes firmly set on the future. He is very excited to talk about his team’s latest work – a brain computer interface (BCI), a 3D-printed robotic arm that could help stroke patients recover from paralysis of their limbs.
He explains that physiotherapy often doesn’t work for stroke patients because recovering from stroke paralysis requires a person to actually think hard about moving their limbs – so hard that the brain has to rebuild those wires. which allow it to move before the stroke.
“In stroke patients, there is nothing wrong with their hands. The nerves and muscles are all intact. Physiotherapies are very passive – the doctor can help the patient move their hands, but there is no way to be sure The patient is really focusing on the movement,” explains Dutta.
The team’s BCI – a cap fitted with electrodes – can “read” a person’s brainwaves and translate it into action in a robotic arm, into which the patient’s hand is placed.
When the person thinks to move their arm, the robotic arm moves their fingers. Repeated exercise with the device eventually leads the brain to make new connections, thereby restoring the ability to control hand movements.
The team successfully tested four patients in India and the UK and are now planning to conduct larger trials.
game changing crawler
Sitting in front of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, Professor Bishakh Bhattacharya runs the Smart Materials, Structures and Systems (SMSS) lab at IIT-Kanpur.
Among his most recent patented technology is a robot that can crawl through gas pipelines to check for leaks and damage.
Built in collaboration with state-run gas company GAIL, the Pipeline Health Monitoring Robot is equipped with optical and magnetic sensors that check for damages in the pipeline.
According to Nayan Jyoti Baishya, who was part of the team that developed the robot, India has over 70,000 kilometers of gas pipelines.
“These pipelines need to be inspected every six months, and we have no existing technology to inspect them. We currently outsource this to German and Canadian companies, who charge exorbitant amounts for it, they say.
“Also, when these inspections are done, they have to block the entire pipeline for this,” he says.
The pipeline health monitoring robot, which can run even when natural gas is flowing, is also just the beginning of another story the lab is writing.
Bhattacharya says, “Using the same scientific principles used to build this robot, we are now working on the idea of a coal hyperloop – a robot that would continuously transport coal from mines to power stations using underground tunnels.” Can carry goods of Rs.
While several robots — including a four-legged system that could help farmers monitor crops for pesticides and a medical robot that could assist in surgery — are under development in the SMSS lab, Bhattacharya’s The goal is to solve the bigger, more fundamental problems that currently plague them. automation industry.
He explains that there are three aspects to building an intelligent system – materials or sensors capable of taking in information from systems around them; actuators or structures that allow the system to function, and finally the processor that brings “intelligence” to the system.
SMSS Lab works on each of these three aspects.
For example, the lab has developed alloy-based artificial muscles for a robotic arm that can be used to help people with amputations. The advancement removes the need for bulky, noisy motors in robotic arms and may also have applications for space robotics.
Bhattacharya points out that the processors in use today are primitive in terms of what we see in the natural world. “Unlike current artificial systems, biological systems do not require thousands of data points to learn simple things. If the processor finds itself faced with a new situation, it will not be able to operate,” he explains.
“Biological systems are inherently more perceptive,” he says.
“What we’re doing currently is we’re transferring our knowledge to computers. In a way they’re just projections of how we see the world. But to understand intelligence systems more can be designed,” he added.
According to Bhattacharya, an ideal intelligent system would sense things that humans do not – such as seeing in the infrared and ultraviolet ranges of light, or hearing beyond the human decibel range – and use those inputs to make its own perceptions.
“That would be a really intelligent system,” he says.
Apart from pushing the boundaries of robotics, some researchers at IIT-Kanpur are also pushing for better alternatives to certain government policies.
Methanol For Fuel, Fighting QR Codes
Government of India has set a target of 20 percent blending of ethanol in petrol. 2025-2026, However, Avinash Kumar Agarwal, who heads the Engine Research Laboratory at IIT-Kanpur, has taken things a step further with his research on methanol.
Agarwal’s team has been able to tweak the engines of commercial Indian bikes in such a way that they can be shifted from petroleum based to methanol.
Methanol is a liquid alcohol fuel that can be obtained from biomass such as agricultural waste.
Agarwal says methanol was used as a fuel in the US in the 1990s, but is no longer used because it has low energy density.
“Also, there was a misconception that the gas is poisonous, but this is true for any fuel. Consuming methanol can lead to blindness or death,” he explains.
According to Agarwal, the use of methanol can reduce the carbon footprint and also reduce the cost of fuel significantly.
“At present, while we are blending ethanol with fuel, the cost of fuel has not come down. The government is blending ethanol with petrol, but the consumer pays the price of petrol,” he says.
Agarwal working closely with NITI Aayog to realize his ‘Methanol Economy’ program’, The initiative aims to reduce India’s oil import bill, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and convert coal reserves and municipal solid waste into methanol.
Meanwhile, for Deepak Gupta, professor of materials science and engineering, the fight is against the now ubiquitous QR code.
Gupta strongly disagrees with the government’s move to encourage the use of QR codes as a means of securing the quality of medicines and other consumer goods.
How is the QR code secure? You can simply copy the code and paste it onto the counterfeit product – the scan will still show you all the correct information. Anyone can generate a QR code. A truly secure code would be something that no one can replicate with any technology,” says Gupta.
“We were concerned about any counterfeiting in India. Roughly around 20 per cent of products in India – across sectors – are counterfeit,” he added.
Gupta has created a new security tag that generates a new pattern every time. He took inspiration from a natural phenomenon, he says: how patterns form when the land surface becomes too dry.
“Like our fingerprints, nothing nature makes identical. Nature always creates diversity,” he adds.
Gupta’s method uses a regular ink jet printer to deposit a thin layer of ink on a small piece of paper. When the ink dries, it creates a unique pattern each time, which cannot be repeated.
The ink layer adds a third layer to the code. An app designed to read these codes can also determine whether the pattern it is reading is a real 3D tag or just a photocopy.
“The key to such a security tag is that the manufacturer should not be able to duplicate it if asked to make a duplicate of it.”
keeping time
At the National Center for Flexible Electronics of IIT Kanpur, work is underway on a smartwatch for the blind.
Siddharth Panda, the coordinator of the centre, along with his team has made the device. The team worked with an NGO for years — understanding the needs of a visually impaired person — before designing the watch.
“Typically, visually impaired people use an analog watch with a glass cover that can be opened. They touch the hands of the watch to read the time. However, constant touching means these watches are more prone to wear and tear.” prone,” says Panda.
“Recently, digital watches have come up with talk-back features. These read out the time, but compromise a person’s privacy,” he explains.
Therefore, the team at Panda has developed a watch that uses tactile feedback in the form of vibrations from a person to read the time.
Like a regular analog watch, there are 12 markers placed along the perimeter of the TacVibes. The hour hand or the minute hand does not move in the clock. Instead, touching the correct markers produced short vibration pulses.
For example, if the time is 2 o’clock, the user will feel a long vibration when placing their finger on the marker for 12, and a short vibration when placing their finger on the 2.
Not only that, but using a combination of the vibrations felt on the dial, smartwatches can also be used to “read” heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and more.
The team is now working on commercializing the watch.
The success of IIT Kanpur’s ventilator project – who saw the institute develop a ventilator In just three months – during the Covid pandemic – has given the institute a new impetus to venture into the field of Med-Tech.
J Ramkumar heads the MedTech Lab of IIT Kanpur and is helping to take relevant technologies being developed at the institute to industry.
Working closely with doctors to understand the needs of the region, the MedTech lab is working on technologies such as an optical probe for gynecological examination, a portable medical oxygen concentrator for ambulances and a device for posture correction.
Off the record, the senior researchers say that each of these inventions is driven by a need to solve society’s many problems, but has other payoffs.
Some of these technologies, if successful, could make founders millionaires. Most of them come from hard-working, middle-class backgrounds. If his venture succeeds, he could suddenly be sitting on shares worth crores, he said.
(Editing by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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