The IIT-Delhis seventh Open House,or the I2Tech 2011,was held on Saturday. The institute,which is celebrating its Golden Jubilee,broke from Open House tradition and displayed the best research from its past along with the efforts of its present batch of students.Engineering students from other colleges in the city,wide-eyed schoolchildren and inquisitive families turned up in large numbers for the show. Awards went to: the Remote Acoustic Surveillance System (first),a Fresnel Mirror-based collection system (second) and the design of a portable wardrobe (third). THE WINNER The first-prize-winning innovation is a Remote Reconfigurable Acoustic Surveillance Platform,designed by two Navy officers who are currently students at the IIT-Delhi. Lieutenant Commanders Mrinal Sinha and Manish Kumar have a device that is essentially a box that can be deposited on the seabed. It captures sound (from submarines to schools of fish),analyses it,and relays the information to a control station. The device is reconfigurable it can also be asked to carry out certain functions. WALKING STABLISER Jituranjan Nayak and Ajay Kumar Behera,first-year MTech students of Applied Mechanics,have tried to redesign the walker for the elderly and have come up with a walking stabliser,which has wheels. As a result,the elderly do not have to lift the walker. Keeping in mind that the user is inherently unstable,the design is such that the rubber brakes are on all the time. Every time the user wants to take a step,all she or he has to do is to release a clutch. TYRE PRESSURE REGULATOR Nand Kishore Majni and Vinay Yadav have proposed an automated tyre pressure regulator,a device that monitors air pressure in car tyres and fills them even as the vehicle is running. The technology is already available in the market,but it is expensive. The students have tried to create a cheaper alternative. The device joins two sides of a tube in a way that one part moves while the other remains stationary the moving part is connected to the cars wheel. The catch lay in finding a more affordable version of a pressure sensor. PLATE WASHER Vinayak M Trigune,Rajesh A Thorat,Pankaj Kumar and Dheerendra K Dewangan,first-year MTech students of Applied Mechanics (Design Engineering),have designed a plate-washing machine. The students estimate that the three-step process that moves the plates using gravity can handle 180 plates per hour. COIN SEPARATOR & COUNTER Siddhant Bahadur,Bharat Aggarwal,Chaitanya Pattapagla,Kashish Arora and Manmohan Gattani second-year Mechanical Engineering students have designed a coin separator and counter as part of their semester project. The machine separates coins based on diameter the students have calibrated it to separate coins of Rs 5,2 and 1 denominations. Counting is done with the help of a laser beam,as falling coins cut it.
