AFTER developing working models of pothole-filling,fruit-picking and autonomous vehicle robots to teach embedded systems (computers embedded in all electronic gadgets) to students,IIT Bombay started Friday the first robotics lab in a college affiliated to Mumbai University. The lab will focus on teaching the systems,robotics and programming to students and teachers. It will provide hands-on learning infrastructure to engineering students with limited access to labs and mentors,besides access to teaching content developed by IIT Bombay. In phase I,labs will be set up in 100 colleges and five nodal centres (each nodal centre will cover around 20 colleges) by year-end. The first nodal centre has been opened at Vidyalankar Institute of Technology,Wadala. All labs will act as hubs of project work and creativity. The lab set-up will bring students and teachers together to work on innovative and meaningful projects and solve existing,tangible problems and create something beyond defined syllabus. It will facilitate hands-on application of engineering,math and computer science in a fun and exciting manner, said Prof Kavi Arya. The initiative is part of the e-yantra project being sponsored by the HRD ministry under National Mission for ICT in Education. By the end of the third year,labs will be set up in 500 colleges and 25 nodal centres across the country. We need local solutions/technologies to sustain growth. We also need good engineers to solve societal problems through technology. The labs are a step in that direction, said Arya. Colleges with strong networking and infrastructure capabilities have been identified as nodal centres. Every such college will coordinate with and mentor 20-30 in a region. Participating colleges will have to invest Rs 5 lakh to purchase robots,tools and ancillary equipment,have a dedicated team of four teachers and provide computers to students. IIT Bombay will mentor and train teachers and help set up infrastructure. Once the labs are in place we can share know-how,teaching insights and project methodologies for teachers to take ownership of our embedded systems course, said Prof Krithi Ramamritham.
