Young geeks huddle to find solutions at hackathon

As many as 72 students from colleges in Tamil Nadu, Chandigarh, Karnataka and Maharashtra are gathered at Forge incubation centre at KCT Tech Park in the city to find solutions for problems posed by the union ministry, government departments and the industry at the Smart India Hackathon – Hardware Edition 2019.
At the five-day non-stop hackathon, the students, in 12 teams, would try to make prototypes for problem statements such as devising a sensor to accurately measure micro and macro nutrient content of soil, developing an organic zero-wastage RO purifier and pedestrian detection and collision avoidance systems. The problems have been put forth by Robert Bosch and Mahindra and Mahindra Limited.
The hackathon is one of the biggest open innovation model platforms in the world, said chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) Anil Sahasrabudhe. “As many as 20,000 entries were received from across the country, which were filtered down to 250 teams, who would work on 124 problem statements from ministries, corporates and MSMEs,” he said.
The software edition of the hackathon has been held for three years. The hardware edition was started last year.
Of the 29 software solutions offered by students in the first edition of the hackathon, 28 have been implemented by Central bodies such as the ministry of ayurveda, yoga & naturopathy, unani, siddha and homoeopathy (Ayush) and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
AICTE is after government departments to acquire funds for developing ideas formed at hackathons into implementable. “If a ministry is not willing to implement an idea, we would direct them to incubators, who would help the team to nurture their ideas into a venture,” Sahasrabudhe added.
More than 250 teams are participating in the hackathon in 18 nodal centres across the country. It will end on Friday. TNN