Awards & Achievements

• Souraj Vishnu, Vishnu Sasikumar and Sreekumar S won the Best Paper Award for the paper “Autonomous Path Guiding Robot for Visually Impaired People” at the International Conference on Cognitive Informatics & Soft Computing (CISC-2017) going on at VBIT, Hyderabad from 20th to 21st December 2017. It is significant to note that the paper was authored by S5 ECE bachelor students. While 99% of the participants were academicians and researchers, our bachelor students made a mark by winning this award.
• Vamsy Vivek collected the IEEE REM Award from Roger Fuji, IEEE CS President (2017 Dec)
• Vamsy Vivek, S8 ECE, won the prestigious IEEE Richard E Merwin Scholarship from IEEE, NJ, USA for the year 2017, for his contributions to Amrita IEEE CS student chapter and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham IEEE SB
• Students of the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Amritapuri Campus, won major prizes in several categories at the OMRG 2016 Robotics Contest held at Singapore on February 21, 2016. Twenty-one teams from different countries contested in the final round.

Under 18 Category:
Team 1: NAAP, Robot: Swachak – Autonomous Room Mopping Robot, Students: Aniketh Das, Pavanth Kumarreddy, P.N.V.K. Naveen, Aswin S.
Team 2: The Challengers, Robot: GeMoRo – Motion Controlled Robot, Students: Sarveswarareddy Sathi, Rishitha M, Chandrika D, Ashwin T R, Aravind PS
Above 18 Category:
Team 1: MAKERS, Robot: ClePa – Staircase Cleaning Robot, Students : Abhijeet Prem, Aravind H. Nair, Aditya Jayakrishnan, Bharath Sn, Arjun P
Team 2: Srishti, Robot: Sparsh – Hand gesture based Navigational Robot, Students – Aparna PTA, Arsha VV, Parvathy Gopal, Akhil G
Team 3: ROHAK, Robot: Amaran – Robotic Coconut Tree Climber, Students: Suryateja Perugupalli, Rajesh GangiReddy, Likhith Bommu, Vignesh Shriram, Sarath Kumar, Vignesh N
Team 4 : Avaroha, Robot: Karbot – Rehabilitation assisting orthosis robot, Students: G Rajesh, B Likhith, S Vignesh, Vinu SV, Nirmal Elamon, Vishnu R

• One of the papers won the Best Paper Award at the recently concluded IEEE WIECON ECE conference held in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology during Dec 19 –20 (2015), in the track AI and Computer Vision.
  Title: “Development of Intelligent Wheelchair Simulator for Indoor Navigation Simulation and Analysis”
• Amritapuri campus IEEE IES Student Chapter won the best student chapter award in the world for the year 2015. The award was given at a grand ceremony in Yokohama Pacificio Hotel, Yokohama city, Japan, at IEEE IECON 2015 on Nov 11. With Prof. Haneda after the award ceremony
• The research paper titled “DTMF based Robotic Arm Design and Control for Robotic Coconut Tree Climber” by Thejus P, Gokul M, Allan P, Trayesh V (all S7 ECE) of HuT Labs, ECE department, got shortlisted in the top five of the final round of the paper presentation contest at IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference 2015, to be held at Seattle, WA, USA from Oct 8 – 11, 2015.
• IEEE IES Student Chapter judged best in the world n won 2015 IEEE IES Student Branch Chapter Award.
• IEEE Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham SB has won the 2014 Darrel Chong Award (for the proposal of ISEE 2014).
• Two of our projects got funding from IEEE SEC (Standards Education Committee). AMBA – APB standard based controller for Health Care Applications (Goutham Ravindran and Raviteja) and Intelligent Wheelchair Simulator (Vishnu GB and Raviteja) are the projects!

By Amma’s grace, the team VIJAYANTA from HuT Labs won the Best-In-Class Dexterity Award under the Standard Disaster Robotics Challenge of Disaster Robotics Category held as part of World Robot Summit (WRS 2021), Tokyo, Japan. There were a total of 10 teams from all over the world which qualified for the finals. The summit was supposed to be held in Jul-Aug 2020. Due to pandemic, it got postponed to 2021 and we participated remotely.

Team: Anandu R, Shree Rajesh Raagul V, Ragavendra B M, Siddharth B, Sakthiprasad K M, Sreekanth M M, Mahendran J, Rajesh Kannan Megalingam

Another journal paper from BTech project accepted in IEEE Canadian journal

HuT Labs is extremely happy to share that, with Amma’s grace and hard work of BTech students and researchers at HuT Labs, another paper titled, “Evaluation of Human Intervention Based Hybrid Approach for Position and Depth Estimation with Error Correction” got accepted for publication by the IEEE journal ”Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering/Journal canadien de génie électrique et informatique” with an impact factor 1.53.

The paper was part of the BTech ECE 2018 batch. After they passed out, it took three more years of multiple rejections and revisions before it got accepted by the IEEE journal.

Paper Title: Evaluation of Human Intervention Based Hybrid Approach for Position and Depth Estimation with Error Correction

Journal Title: IEEE Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering/Journal canadien de génie électrique et informatique.

Authors List: Rajesh Kannan Megalingam, Ashwin Kashyap Nellutla, Sriteja Gone, Sakthiprasad Kuttankulangara Manoharan, Sreekanth Makkal Mohandas, Shree Rajesh Raagul Vadivel, and Chennareddy Pavanth Kumar Reddy.

Special thanks to Gopalaiengar Sheshadri sir for helping us with the internal review and editing the paper.

15 HuT Labs student researchers get masters in reputed US universities

 By Amma’s grace, 15 student researchers from HuT Labs, ECE have got admissions for various master’s programs in multiple reputed universities across USA. Following is the list of students and the universities they have chosen to join as of now while waiting for results of their masters applications in better ranked universities.

1. Deepak Nagalla (2020 ECE) – University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2. Ruthvik Chanda (2020 ECE) – University of California, Irvine
3. Nigam Katta (2020 ECE) – Georgia Tech University, Atlanta
4. Vamsy Gontu (2020 ECE) – New Jersey Institute of Technology, New Jersey
5. Akhil Tammana (2020 ECE) – Georgia Tech University, Atlanta
6. Nikhil Chowdary (2020 ECE) – Stevens Institute of Techology, New Jersey
7. Jahnavi Yannam (2020 ECE) - Stevens Institute of Techology, New Jersey
8. Hemanth Surya (2021 ECE) – University of Maryland, College park
9. Sakhita G (2021 ECE) – University of Oklahoma, Norman
10. Monika Reddy (2021 ECE) – University of Cincinnati, Ohio
11. Avinash Hegde (2022 ECE) – North Carolina State University, Raleigh
12. Anirudh Babu (2022 ECE) – Northeastern University, Boston
13. Sriram Ghali (2022 ECE) – Colorado State University, Boulder
14. Tejaswi P (2022 ECE) – George Mason University, Virginia
15. Lokesh K ((2022 ECE)  – University of Dayton, Ohio

Congratulations all! You have made HuT Labs and Amrita proud! May Amma bless you with all health and wealth in life.

Amrita wins top three prizes at ROBOCON 2021, Tokyo, Japan

When India celebrates the Gold Medal win at Olympics by Neeraj Chopra in javelin throw, Amrita can celebrate  for winning three prizes in the International Design Contest (IDC 2021) Robocon held online at Tokyo Tech University, Tokyo, Japan. Incidentally the Olympics is also going on in Japan.

Take a moment to congratulate the Amrita heroes who won the prizes and other students who were part of the finals.

1. Sankars Das (S7 ECE) – First Prize
2. Sai Smaran (S5 ECE) – Second Prize
3. Gaurav Rudravaram (S5 ECE) – Best Design Award

The competition was held for two weeks online due to pandemic, from Jul 26 to Aug 7, 2021. 11 students from HuT Labs, ECE, were fortunate enough to get into the finals of IDC2021. There were 13 teams in the finals. Students from HuT Labs have won first prizes consecutively in the year 2018 (TokyoTech, Japan) and 2019 (MIT, USA) in  IDC2018 and IDC2019. The competition is based on invitation only and is extended to only one top university of 15 countries including Japan, Singapore, China, South Korea, France, Brazil, Mexico, India etc. This year students from 8 countries took part in the competition.

HuT Labs project wins 2nd Prize at Medical Robotics For Contagious Diseases Challenge 2020

By Amma’s grace, the project NEPHO – A Tele-operated Wheelchair with Negative Isolation Hood by HuT Labs, ECE won the runner-up prize at the Medical Robotics For Contagious Diseases Challenge 2020, organized by UKRAS Network, UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) Network based in United Kingdom. The project was designed to transport COVID patients safely and to avoid spreading of virus in the environment. The project was funded by IEEE SIGHT.

This unique challenge attracted 21 entries from 13 countries – Bangladesh, China, Colombia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Mexico, Pakistan, Uganda, UK and USA – and the winners were decided, from a shortlist of 17 exceptional submissions, by a prestigious judging panel, including Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham, Co-Director of IGHI, Professor of Surgery at Imperial College London, UK; Simon Di Maio, Director, Research at Intuitive Surgical, USA; Prof. Russell H. Taylor, John C. Malone Professor at John’s Hopkins University, USA; and Dr. Thomas Neff, Manager Software Medical Robotics at KUKA Deutschland GmbH, De.

https://www.ukras.org/news/winners-of-the-medical-robotics-for-contagious-diseases-challenge-announced

Various robots for COVID cause – HuT Labs, ECE

Dear all,
For the past few weeks we were working with several robotic projects at HuT Labs with initiation and blessings from Amma, our university Chancellor for using during COVID situation. Thanks to Shankar sir, Dhanajay, Akhil Raj, Anandu, Arun and Sreelal at HuT Labs. Without their support and help we couldn’t have achieved this. Thanks to Br. Sreevalsan who arranged for GAD help.

ANNAPOORNA: This remotely operated robot using WiFi can serve food, water and medicine to patients in isolated wards. It also has tele-medicine facility and enables patients in isolated wards to interact with doctors/nurses remotely. Will be very useful for front line workers who supply food, water and medicine to the patients during pandemic/epidemic in hospitals.

PRABHA: Fitted with a siren for safety when operated, the mobile robot uses Bluetooth for remote control. The UV lamps can be switched on/off remotely. Can disinfect a room of 12×12 feet in less than an hour. It can used to disinfect patient rooms, rest rooms, medical equipment etc.

BODHI: Police/security personnel can use as outdoor surveillance and awareness robot on the streets, during shutdown/curfew in a situation like COVID or any pandemic or epidemic. Fitted with 360 degrees camera, and powerful speaker, it can be remotely operated using WiFi. It can be used in containment areas on streets where even police/security personnel can’t access. Police/security personnel can play recorded messages or even give live instructions from the control station.

MARUTI: The operator/caretaker using a Bluetooth application which can be installed in any smartphone or using a wireless joystick controller can operate the wheelchair at a safe distance of 1m up to 4m. Patients in isolation wards can be transported without the need for the operator to touch the wheelchair or the patients.

Self-E 2.0: With the self-driving wheelchair, Self-E 2.0, patients in isolation wards can be transported without the need for the operator. With the help of maps created for each floor of the hospital, the wheelchair can operate in various floors, autonomously.

Faculty Achievements And professional recognitions

Faculty Name: Dr: Rajesh Kannan Megalingam.
1. Awards

2) Professional Recognitions

Projects

Description:
Most of the current research in mechanical energy harvesting focusses on converting mechanical energy created by human actions into electrical energy. Amusement parks industry is one of the world’s fastest growing industries in terms of revenue collected and attendance per year. According to a more recent unofficial survey conducted by roller coaster database, there are more than five thousand amusement parks in the world. Walt Disney World consumes the largest amount of power per year at 1213006 MWh of power with kids rides alone amounting to 83737 MWh of power annually.  This project proposes a method of utilizing mechanical energy to drive a kid’s ride instead of electricity. The energy is harvested by winding a flat spiral spring and stored in the same spring through human action. This mechanical energy, without conversion into electrical energy, is used to drive a mechanical kid’s ride. As there is no energy conversion involved in the proposed method, there is no loss of energy. A kid’s ride prototype, Turtle Bot Ride (TBR) using the flat spiral spring is designed andevaluated.

2. Self driving wheelchair with Multimap Navigation for Multi-floor access using Elevator
description :
The Self driving wheelchair is developed for transportation of patients, differently abled and elderly people without any external intervention.  It can reduce the burden of manual  navigation and can make transportation easier by a single touch using an android application. The wheelchair is built with an isolation hood which will be helpful to keep social distancing. The transportation of infected patients will be risky incase of manual or powered wheelchairs without proper isolation. This self driving wheelchair can map any multi-floor building and can be used for multi-floor access using an elevator. The wheelchair also includes a manual mode which can be controlled using the same android application.

The system software is based on the ROS navigation stack, and it can map each floor separately, and load the maps according to the user’s needs. A Simultaneous Localization and mapping algorithm is used to create maps. A 360 degree laser scanner is used for mapping and navigation procedures.  The user can access the elevator from any floor in the building using the android application. When an elevator reaches a particular floor, the floor map can be selected in the application and the wheelchair can be navigated to that floor. The map server in ROS Navigation stack  is used to publish different maps as per the user input. The self driving wheelchair has a linux based control unit and a pair of 320 watt motors to power it. The wheelchair movement in the environment is monitored by a pair of rotary encoders attached to the motors. A six-axis  Inertial  Measurement Unit tracks the orientation of the wheelchair with respect to the environment. In addition to this several  Ultrasonic Sensors are included to avoid collision.

The wheelchair can be very much useful in hospitals for the transportation of patients across multiple floors. Since the wheelchair has an isolation hood it will be safe to transport infected patients during a pandemic without any social contact. It has a wide application including households, universities, airports and other public places.