Smart city challenges, ways to tackle them dominate ideation contest

CHENNAI: College students from Tamil Nadu dominated the smart city challenge, an ideation and prototype development contest introduced for the first time in Shaastra, IIT-M’s annual technical fest.
As part of the contest, five different problem statements involving various aspects of the smart city mission, the central government’s urban renewal and retrofitting programme, were given to participants.

Of the 99 students who registered from across the country, 19 were shortlisted by experts from Honeywell, a private software firm, and IIT faculty based on the feasibility, cost effectiveness and project description, said A Ajiynka, a student-organiser from IIT.

All the teams presented their ideas and a prototype at Shaastra on Friday and six teams shared the top three positions. Of them, five teams were from Tamil Nadu. IIT (BHU) Varanasi was the only team from another state to win a prize. A team from Trichy shared the first place with them.

The Trichy team, from Saranathan College of Engineering, developed an Internet of Things (IoT)-based intelligent drone transportation system. This device was aimed at assisting government and other agencies in transport and traffic management on a real-time basis, said N Muthu Karuppan, one of the students from the team.

Another interesting project which caught the attention of visitors was a water leak prevention system developed by Kongu Engineering College, Erode. S Suvetha, one of the project developers, said a typical home can lose 7,500 litres to 75,000 litres of water a year due to leaky faucets. Though taps fitted with sensors to detect human presence are available, they are costly and can’t detect or stop leaks.

“Our device can detect leaks and fix it by closing the gate valve in the tap,” she added.

The winners were awarded with cash prizes worth 80 lakh.