BENGALURU: A low-cost, unique set of headlights, aimed at averting car accidents was an eye-catching item on display during a design contest for students held in the city recently.
The project by students of the Medicaps Group of Institutions, Indore, made use of assistive headlights connected to the steering wheel of the car. This was displayed along with nine other prototypes from across the country during the sixth annual Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge India Design Contest.
Two fourth-year engineering students (ECE), Prankur Kataria and Saurabh Sanghvi, worked on the headlight project under the guidance of associate professor of the Electronics Department, Vivekrajguru.
The headlight is movable and fits into existing multiple low-end car models.
Speaking to Express, Sanghvi said, “The prototype senses the steering of the car electrotonically and controls the mechanical structure of headlight towards the direction where the car is turning.”
He said that adaptive headlight systems are already in place in high end cars, but no such solution exists for low to mid range cars. “Our vision is to develop a cost-effective, cross platform compatible and robust solution addresses the problem,” he said.
Kataria said, “30 per cent of the road accidents in India during night amounts to nearly 150,000 accidents per year. We believe that enhanced vision at night can help to alleviate the problem. One step towards achieving that goal is better visibility at curves. Studies conducted by HLDI (Highway Loss Data Institute) show that there has been a reduction in insurance claims for car accidents in the cars which have adaptive headlights.”
Before the release of the prototype, students made several trials and tests to check its functioning and capacity.
They took three months to complete the project. The real challenge was in bringing the headlights from high-end cars to low-end models, the duo said.
The students believe their innovation can be a hit as it costs less Rs 4,000 and can be used for different cars and it is easy to install.
City College Bags First Prize
Students from the MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology bagged the India Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge Chairman’s Award for ‘FMCW Radar for 3D Automotive Imaging’. The project was aimed at reducing the number of accidents. Their innovation detects the distance of moving vehicles to avoid front collision accidents. This project was done in span of one year. The students did the project under the guidance of M S Srinivas of the Electronics Department of the Institute.