IIT-Delhi’s Design Competition Aims To Solve Rural Problems

The Rural Technology Action Group (RuTAG) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has announced the first design competition ‘Rural Innovative Technohunt – A technical challenge to identify rural problems and suggest solutions’. The aim of this competition is to identify rural problems and suggest technical interventions to solve them.

Problems can be from various themes including agriculture and animal husbandry, village industries, education, health, energy resources, water and sanitation and other relevant areas. The competition is open to all the students, staff and faculty of IIT-Delhi.

SK Saha, the coordinator and principal investigator (PI) of RuTAG at IIT-Delhi, said, “The concept of RuTAG club was introduced a few years ago at IIT-Delhi in order to expose the students to the technical problems or challenges at the grass-root level. In a way, it was a movement for Connecting Engineering Minds with the Society.”

The competition this year was conceived by one of the Co-PIs of RuTAG-IIT Delhi, Prof Sangeeta Kohli. She and Prof Kavya Dashora, along with a group of energetic students of RuTAG club have framed the rules, informed Saha.

The competition will be held in three stages:  Concept submission, Detailed design, and Prototype development. The teams selected for stage three will be provided funding of up to Rs 50,000 for prototype development in case the product is hardware. After developing a working prototype, the teams will be required to test it and submit a report.

If the product is software, the teams will be required to submit a functional software with required GUIs, test the software for realistic situations and submit a report. The teams in Stage three need to give a demo of their prototypes on April 20, 2019 during the Open House of IIT Delhi.

Winners of Stage 3 will be awarded a certificate of appreciation along with a plaque. They may also seek a seed grant up to Rs. 2.0 lakhs per project from the Design Innovation Centre of IIT Delhi to carry their idea forward.

The RuTAG will also facilitate rural or social internship to the winners of Stage three in reputed organisations or institution. The registration for the design competition has started and the last date of submission of concept note is December 31, 2018.

The Rural Technology Action Group (RuTAG) at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD) was established in January 2009.

(Source: TheIndianExpress Education)