CHENNAI: How does it feel like if you wake up in the morning and see yourself in a mirror getting all the important updates for the day — from weather forecast to appointments and social media? What if you threw a pet bottle in the bin and in return it popped up a one rupee coin to encourage an eco-friendly society? Or how about a robot replacing a waiter in restaurants?
These are the kind of innovative projects that will be on display at the eleventh edition of Kurukshetra, a techno-management fest from February 15 to 18.
Kurukshetra is supported by UNESCO, Digital India under the National E-governance Division and Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and is also certified by ISO 9001:2015. Combating climate change is the theme of this year.
P Narayanasamy, the dean of College of Engineering, Guindy, said for the first time, `5 lakh has been sanctioned for the fest. “There will be 33 events in seven domains. All these are done entirely by students,” he added.
Registrar S Ganesan said students this time would display projects that are required in the society. “Anna University is actively involved in entrepreneurship. We have an exclusive women entrepreneurship cell. We also conduct competitions and other programmes, which brings together students and industries,” he said. Around 6,000 to 8,000 footfalls from colleges across the country are expected in the fest, he added.
One of the projects to be displayed is ‘Magic Mirror’. Inspired by Mirror of Erised from the blockbuster Harry Potter, the students of Electronic and Communication Engineering (ECE) have come up with this. Unlike a normal mirror, this will fetch you all the required information from weather forecast, news and social networking feed, quotes, general compliments and so on. “It will have a database of all the people using this mirror in the processor called raspberry pi, which is attached inside the mirror,” said S Keerthana an ECE student. A web page has been created and all required information put into the processor. Being user-friendly, it is just like a phone lock screen and could act like Google as well, she added. “At present, it is voice based with a voice recognition module. There will be a speaker and you can address the mirror by a name and it will fetch you the information. Later, we will modify to touchscreen,” said KM Nikhil another student.
‘Servy bot’ is a robot which could replace a waiter in a restaurant. The main objective to build this is to transfer files in office or deliver food in restaurants. “It can transfer files from one place to the other, which otherwise is done by people. It will be operated with the help of an app. The commands will be given,” said N Rahul Raj, an ECE student, adding that it could work on wi-fi, while for many users, hotspot has to be used. Radio frequency identification tag would be used with ultrasonic sensors to immediately stop the robot, he said.