Electric Bike Made From Scrap Materials, VR Game Help Institute Win Top CII Award

An e-bike made from scrap materials, an automated trolley for picking products at shopping malls, an Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart farming device and a VR game, among other innovations, has helped Salem-based Thiagarajar Polytechnic College emerge as the winner in the CII instituted ‘Industrial Innovation Awards 2021’.

The innovations made it the only polytechnic in the country to have won this coveted CII award, the institute said in a statement on Monday.

“We are proud that mentoring by faculty during the pandemic contributed to several student projects focused on innovative deployment of technology that led to the Thiagarajar Polytechnic being chosen for the CII Industrial Innovation Award 2021," said Chocko Valliappa, Vice Chairman of Sona group of education institutions.

Two teams of the mechanical engineering department had designed and developed an e-bike from an old petrol motorcycle materials, named Fuerza, and an automated trolley for picking products at shopping malls, called ‘Smart Dache’.

The red-and-blue bike can run 80 km on full electric charge, owing to an efficient lithium-ion battery. The recharge for the bike costs a mere Rs 20.

According to Kris Gopalakrishnan, Past President, CII, and Chairman, CII Industrial Innovation Awards, “innovation combined with entrepreneurship, and a focus on research, innovation, and entrepreneurship is the key to a strong economy".

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The polytechnic students have also developed ‘Crop Guidance and Farmers Friend’, a smart-farming app using IoT technology. Other innovations include a ‘Low Cost Corn Separator, a ‘Smart Fertiliser Dispenser and an ‘E-Bus Pass."

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Under the most innovative research institutions category, IIT Roorkee got the award for developing innovative visco-elastic ‘Energy Dissipating Link Elements’ for earthquake-resistant housing construction, ‘Nitrogen-Doped Reduced Graphene Oxide’ (N-rGO) for high-performance supercapacitor and ‘Novel hybrid’ adsorbent for simultaneous removal of arsenic and fluoride from contaminated water.

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