BENGALURU: A team of 25 students of PES University collaborated with students from universities across the world to design a vehicle for senior citizens for first and last-mile connectivity, and have won laurels for their efforts. This was part of an international mobility competition called the PACE Global Annual Forum, held at the GM Warren Tech Centre, USA, from July 22 to 25. Organised by General Motors, it is an initiative for the advancement of collaborative engineering education. The teams were required to develop a ‘personal urban mobility access’ (PUMA) using green and sustainable technologies.
Speaking about the competition, Dr V Krishna, chairperson, PG Studies, Mechanical Engineering, PES University, and mentor to the students, says, “We spent the first year designing and developing a prototype, and fabrication and presentation in a real-life situation were done in the second year.”
Each team had to collaborate with students from other universities for the project. These were Maua University and University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), Michigan Tech (USA), SJCE (Mysore), Rheinmain University (Germany). Competing with more than 65 universities from all around the globe, students won prizes in the manufacturing, product design and customer insight categories and a special Siemens PLM (product lifecycle management) Excellence Award. The team was also highly successful during the first year of the competition, which started in 2017. They gained recognition for an innovative technology to cool vehicle engines at PACE 2017, held at Toluca, Mexico.
“PACE provides an opportunity to compete at the global level and interact with industry leaders to solve challenges of future mobility, and bridging the gap between classroom and industry,” says Bharath Bharadwaj, member PACE team, PES University. Only 10 of the 25 students travelled to the US for the competition. The team at PES University were divided into several domains and were from various branches — electrical, electronics and computer science. “These models have been designed for future production. When we look at concepts, such as green mobility, we understand that they would be the norm after 10 or 15 years when the market is ready for such products,” adds Bharath.