Intel inside,for world outside

Winners of the first Intel India Embedded Challenge has come up with market-relevant innovations.

Sanjay Bansal is trying to get the Tractrobot moving,but hours of demo after demo have taken a toll on this prototype of a remotely-manned tractor that can perform any basic farming task tilling,seeding,spraying,harvesting at the push of a button. Tractrobot,which bagged the Rs 10 lakh prize at the first Intel India Embedded Challenge in Bangalore on Wednesday,has a camera mounted on it and can be steered through fields by a WiFi-enabled remote control unit.

Sounds too complicated for a farmer? Bansal,whose start-up IT-Wizkid is based in Delhi,and his associates,Aman Jain,Rishabh Goyal and Anupam Singh,have made sure it isnt. While the actual interface unit isnt ready yet,they say it will have buttons in basic colours like red and yellow marked out for each task. The farmer only has to remember the sequence in which to press the buttons, Bansal says.

With separate motherboards for each task,even if one isnt functioning,the tractor will continue to perform the other tasks. Inspired by a survey conducted among farmers,the project is aimed at making agriculture more attractive to youngsters who dont want to rough it out in the fields,as also at increasing productivity,says Bansal.

A regular tractor can be turned into a high-tech Tractrobot vehicle for Rs 70,000,while automated tractors available in the market cost upward of Rs 20 lakh.

The Delhi team has demonstrated the project at other technology fairs and says the response has been promising. Were meeting a tractor company with our proposal right after this event, says Bansal.

The winners of the challenge will participate in the India Innovation Pioneers Challenge conducted by Intel in association with the Department of Science amp; Technology and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum.

The Embedded Challenge,announced in August 2009 and attended by scientists from IITs and other premier research institutions across the country,received 2,170 ideas,from which 36 teams were short-listed and each provided with an Intel Atom processor kit to build their project on. The result was a range of high-tech,market-relevant innovations from a high-speed video camera to monitor vehicular speed and to identify violators,by a team from the Vellore Institute of Technology,which won the runner-up prize of Rs 1 lakh,to an automobile system loaded with map integration overlaying GPS maps on the actual route ahead,pictured by a camera,a fuel efficiency sensor,an alcohol sensor,a headlight monitoring system,and a black box to record all the information,which,for those who want to show off their driving skills,can be evaluated and put up on a Facebook page.

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Second runners-up,the team of students from the Vivekanand Education Societys Institute of Technology,Mumbai,led by Arnold Pereira,says the prototype cost about Rs 20,000 the market price of a GPS.

With a lot of safety features built into it,were hoping cabs and insurance companies will pick it up, says Pereira,whose project was pitted against a home automation system called Couch Potato,a wireless sensor network-based system for railway track safety,and a pollution control system,among others. Designed by Raj Vignesh and associates from Sona College of Technology,Salem,the embedded system-based pollution-reducing appliance has a chemical unit that processes the carbon monoxide as well as the carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas that does not figure in vehicular emission norms in exhaust fumes to convert them to harmless calcium carbonate.

With 150 g of soda lime and 50 g of ferric oxide,you can treat the exhaust from a two-wheeler running for 450 km, says Vignesh,who is working on integrating the system into vehicles. Next-generation cars will be able to minimise these emissions,but for another 40 years,while were stuck with older cars,we could chemically treat them as they are generated, he adds.