COEP students developing Robot Bank for BDDS
Sushant Kulkarni
Sunday, May 16, 2010 AT 11:47 AM (IST)
Tags: Pune, COEP, robot, BDDS, MCCIA


PUNE: Bridging the gap between the academics and practitioners, students from College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) are developing a Robot Bank for the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) of Pune police.

Parivartan, a city-based group of young professionals and Janvani, an initiative of Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (MCCIA) have been instrumental in bringing together the squad and COEP students, who are now ready with the final designs of these robots after information and knowledge sharing among them.

Shantipal Ohol, who is in-charge of the Centralised Robotics and Automation Lab at COEP, said, “In our first meeting with BDDS, their officers explained to us their basic requirements. A single robot with all these capabilities of detection, handling and disposal would have been a costly and complicated work. So what we decided was a set of small, easy to operate and cost effective robots. The officers from the squad approved the designs and we are now working on it.”

Speaking to Sakàl Times, Dilip Jagdale of BDDS said, “Buying readily available robots built by defence research organisations was a very costly affair. So we asked engineering college students through Parivartan. They will be building for us specialised small robots for performing singular tasks.”

“The most important motive was to establish a connect between this government agency and fresh innovative minds from academics. We and Janvani played the role of catalysts,” explained Hrishikesh Karve of Parivartan. “The funding for prototype building will be borne by COEP. The funds for further improvisations and large scale production will be provided by MCCIA through Janvani,” he added.

CAMERA ROBOT

Shantipal Ohol from COEP’s Robotics Lab said, “In cases of bomb threats, the first task for the squad is the visual detection of explosive and then taking the suspicious object to a safe distance. We have given a demo of the robot which can help in detection of bombs, even from under the cars, with the help of a special camera. The camera has 360 degree rotation facility.”
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