Gram Marg, Rural Broadband project IIT Bombay has joined hands with the Government of India (GoI) to address the issue of Internet connectivity challenges facing rural India. BharatNet has been an GoI initiative that aims to deploy fibre optic cable connecting Gram Panchayats across all states of India by the year 2019. ,
 

At the National Centre of Excellence in Technology for Internal Security (NCETIS), our group has conceived, designed and developed an emergency communication system for Public Protection & Disaster Relief (PPDR). This system facilitates realtime video streaming by first responders (police / anti-terrorist forces / disaster response teams) to maintain direct communication between team members in the field and to provide a global view of the operation at a single point.The system operates in sub-GHz frequency band and has been designed in consultation with elite forces in the country.

While digital tuners are commonly used by musicians to set precisely tuned pitches in an instrument, instrument beginners can benefit greatly from an automatic device that measures the overall ‘goodness’ of the sound in order to provide corrective feedback on the articulation skill of the player. Intonation, dynamics and tone quality are important attributes of musical sounds that can be estimated by acoustic signal analyses.

The country has been witnessing issues of sustainability in many livelihoods programme in past in different places. In most of the cases, post project period, the initiative faces challenges to become sustainable. This has been an issue with most of the development activities.

In the above context, our research group had envisaged a model as solution. After initial efforts, our group found that a model which includes an implementable market linkage as an essential component, can sustain a livelihood programme.

It is increasingly becoming apparent that technology can enhance the productivity of resource-challenged agricultural practices in developing countries. In India, the agriculture uses 80% of available water and out of which 40% water is wasted. Over irrigation causes the leaching of micro and macro nutrients from the soil contaminating the ground water and reduced crop yield. The efficiency of water usage in the agricultural fields needs to be improved. With this motivation, we have developed a low cost soil monitoring system.

In a resource-constrained society in developingnations like India, the importance of health care infrastructure allocation is often undermined and overlooked. We have looked into the issue of access from the perspective of policy making and resource allocation as well as from the people’s needs and demand. While affordability, accessibility and availability varies among the heterogeneous urban fabric in urban India, our research focus has been on the formulations of (i) strategies to ensure access to facilities and to

Lack of standardised sustainable habitat design guidelines for low-income housing plays an important role in determining the poor quality of life in these settlements, particularly in the slums. Our work investigates process-driven pathways for developing and delivering sustainable habitat design guidelines using socio-technical frameworks. We employ mixed-mode research methods where we integrate the depth of engineering with the breadth of social science to understand low-income habitat from the perspective of people, places and practices.

Ocular trauma is one of the most common types of combat injuries resulting from the exposure of army/security personnel with improvised explosive devices. Specifically, in India and other terrorism affected nations, there are several cases of injury of human eyes caused by the blasts. Ocular blast injury mechanisms are complex, and trauma may occur through various injury mechanisms. Since blast field measurements are not trivial, we used computational modeling to reconstruct the TNT blast events on an anatomically accurate human face and eye.

With growing need for security and safety of public from war, terrorist activities and anti-social activities, it has become very important to design and develop in-house skills for the detection of various analytes such as explosives, chemical and biological warfare agents and substance abuse. Currently in India, only canines are the best working explosive detection systems. In case of landmines, metal detectors are used extensively along with the canines.

While tracing veins in patients, there is a difficulty in locating the veins—especially in children, darker skinned and obese people which leads to unnecessary multiple needle pricks that causes pain and injury.

The vein tracer has been designed as a simple light-weight device that humanises a simple technology (NIR Spectroscopy), helping medical practitioners easily identify the veins during vein-puncture procedures, thereby reducing patients trauma.

Features

 ■ The vein detector is convenient, light weight

At the Photonics Laboratory in IIT Bombay, we are developing various photonic devices based on different spectroscopic techniques. They are tailored for various opto-electronic and sensing applications in the agricultural, healthcare and environmental sector.

At the Photonics Laboratory in IIT Bombay, we are developing various photonic devices based on different spectroscopic techniques. They are tailored for various opto-electronic and sensing applications in the agricultural, healthcare and environmental sector. One such device is the low cost polymer based multi-modal / multi-spectral wide band MEMS photonic sensing platform

Multispectral    

 ■ Photoresponsivity / photoconductivity of single device ranges from UV-visible to mid-infrared
 

Multimodal

At the Photonics Laboratory in IIT Bombay, we are developing various photonic devices based on different spectroscopic techniques. They are tailored for various opto-electronic and sensing applications in the agricultural, healthcare and environmental sector. One such device is the Gas sensor for environmental monitoring system based on ZnO hybrid microcrystal.

At the Photonics Laboratory in IIT Bombay, we are developing various photonic devices based on different spectroscopic techniques. They are tailored for various opto-electronic and sensing applications in the agricultural, healthcare and environmental sector. One such device is the non-contact and in-field soil analysing device based on diffused reflectance spectroscopy technique. The project ‘Moisture sensor for controlled irrigation’ is funded by the Konceptogen company.

At the Photonics Laboratory in IIT Bombay, we are developing various photonic devices based on different spectroscopic techniques. They are tailored for various opto-electronic and sensing applications in the agricultural, healthcare and environmental sector.

Motivation    

 ■ A need for a healthcare monitoring system with fast detection response and reduced device footprint which is non-destructive for the sample, and also immune to external electromagnetic interference

Novelty
 

Mountainous land is widely distributed throughout the world and the soils in such area are subjected to many construction projects. The long term durability and fitness of the projects depend upon the soundness of the engineering behaviour of the soil. Due to the inferior geotechnical properties, sometimes mountainous soil poses serious threats on the projects during and/or after the construction. To improve their properties, lime can be utilised as it is cost-effective and easily available additive.

A helmet is an essential safety device but, lugging around a bulky helmet is so inconvenient that many two wheeler riders and their pillions would chose to go without one—even though this may be a fatal choice. While rules have come into place for enforcing helmet usage, there have been no noticeable design interventions for improving the Indian two-wheeler driver and pillions helmet experience. This is in spite of many improvements available in materials and technologies over the years.

As tradition, all of us visit temples for worship, but we never appreciate the beauty and efforts taken in building these lovely artifacts. Lighting that can enhance heritage temples and forts by night – is currently done in a fairly insensitive manner. Nails are driven into century old stone walls, irreparably damaging the sculptures, murals and inscriptions inside the temples. The

The Vaishno Devi Palki has been redesigned for improving the conditions in which Palkhi bearers make a livelihood. The existing heavy Palkhi which is 65 kg rests upon their shoulders causing injury and long term muscle damage in the Palkhi bearers.

Our team has designed a new Palkhi in stainless steel for the Shree Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board. This has a longer life and nil maintenance issues compared to the previous palkhi.