Summer Internship at IIT Bombay – Chayatan from RV College of Engineering
Chayatan (right-most) interned at IIT Bombay and shares how he bagged this internship. Chayatan is an Electronics & Communication Engineering student at RV College of Engineering. Read on to explore about the interesting project he undertook during this internship.
Every Individual would want to know what his interests are and where exactly he can tap his career. Especially, they would like to exercise their skills to expertise on their interests, and one of the best ways to achieve this is, no doubt, an internship.
Having Internship in a reputed organization or company is a dream of many, and yes, I was one among them. Everyday, I used to ponder the ways of how I can get a chance to pursue internship of my desire., and one such opportunity just knocked my door. I was studying in my 6th semester, B.E. 2014 Electronics and Communication engineering at RVCE.
Friends, I must admit that this internship offer I received was not my cup of coffee until I won a challenging competition. When I was studying in 5th Sem, ECE, my beloved friend Akhil Jain told me that there was a competition organized by e-Yantra, IIT-Bombay. My happiness knew no bounds on hearing his words, eagerly I collected all the information to move ahead and warmed up myself with prerequisites to participate this mega event.
Myself and with a team of four including my best buddy Akhil, gave our names and registered for the competition online. Participating was not that easy as said. We had to pass an entry level test to participate. We got the questions that were to our expertise so we cracked the test and hoped for the best. For our surprise, we noticed our team name was shortlisted. I thought the competition would be a kind of easy going, but the topic allotted to us quite weird. A theme called, “Weeding robot” was given to our team. Isn’t the name unusual for people who are always into books 24/7?
We had to build a prototype of the actual robot which would be in the agriculture field and submit a small video clip to them through mail. Later on, they would decide and tell whether we were selected for the final round. To do all these we were given, Firebird V educational robot which costs about 25000 INR. Luckily they issued it to us for free. We had to build all the mechanical structure on this kit to satisfy our need, i.e., our robot had to detect weeds, up root them, collect it in a basket and dump them in a particular Zone.
We as a team worked day and night towards this project though we had our curriculum subjects on the other side. Nevertheless we were selected for the finals and were invited to IITB campus to challenge the finals. We had to compete with other teams by finishing the given task with minimal errors and within a time bound. Out team, after so many trial and error operations, bagged the second prize that day. This was the amazing night of our lives with full of cheers and applause. This winning gave us the Internship opportunity at IITB for about 1 and a half months. Yes friends, it was that day, we headed back to Bangalore with pleasant memories and lots of goodies in our bags, and most importantly, our internship offers in our hands. I was so overwhelmed that I would be in Bombay for about 6 weeks in my holidays, and it happened exactly, as soon as my 6th semester ended.
Bombay was so hot that I couldn’t sit anywhere without sweat on my face. It was a very humid climate. I survived as the Labs were air conditioned which chilled me out and gave me the ray of hope to continue further. I and Akhil were a part of this internship program. All the interns were given hostel and mess facilities, but unfortunately we were supposed to pay for it.
On the first day of our internship, guides helped us in knowing the campus and other ongoing campus activities. All we interns were comparing their college with this campus. Very common, what else we would do. All interns introduced themselves and where they came from, and within a day or so, we were all friends.
On the second day, all the interns were interviewed and based on the individual’s skill and caliber we were teamed up in groups of two. We were 14 of us participating in the internship program, each one from different parts of the country and with different background. That was an amazing day to know each other.
I was teamed up with a guy named ‘Mukhilan Algarappa’. He was from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. He was an amazing Quizzer. He was basically a chilled out guy and was open to everyone. One funniest thing was they neither understood nor could speak Hindi, but fortunately or unfortunately, he and his team were in Bombay. They faced a series of problems and consequences during the course of internship, all related to misunderstanding and wrong communication. Nevertheless, I used to help him in this regard as I knew Hindi, I could converse well with others. Guys, better know Hindi.
Our projects, as an overview, had both mechanical and electronic stuff involved. The list of projects allotted to us were- Sensor module interfacing, Humanoid robot, Kinect based module development, Conveyor belt, stepper motors and communication module interfacing Mukhilan and I worked on Sensor module interfacing. Prof Kavi Arya, HOD of Computer Science Department, was our chief guide. He helped us to carry out our projects. This person was also the head of e-Yantra Lab. It was under his supervision and guidance where all the programs were being conducted. He had mild nature and always inspired us to think out of the box. This helped us to know how nature and thought process can lead us from problem space to solution space.
The major idea of my internship project was to completely automate the Indian agriculture system using modern tools at low cost. Keeping this as the vision, my team was allotted specific tasks to gather real-time data of the crops, weeds, ripening of fruits and vegetables, human or cattle intervention in the fields and controlling the robot from a remote area.
I used the FireBird V educational robot, and equipped it with necessary sensors and communication modules so that the robot could interact with the real world in more sophisticated way. As time progressed, we were able to achieve our milestones in a much easier way.
This internship was not just limited to these projects, we had series of interactive, innovative, informative and empowering workshops held in the e-Yantra Lab. Lots of group discussions, regarding our projects and many other topics which involved, means and methods to enrich our nation by using the existing resources innovatively. To our surprise, they had also arranged ‘Bombay Darshan’. This was a one day outing to most exciting places in Bombay. We had a visit to the Gate Way of India, Queen’s necklace road, Marine Drive, various churches, Malls, and we interns went shopping in Bazars to take some memories. This was an amazing day of my life as I saw a lot of new things which I had never even come across earlier.
Most importantly, during the last week of this program was the entrepreneurship workshop which has embedded a seed in us to choose becoming an entrepreneur as our main and final goal. Exactly this is what India is lacking in. India depends on other countries for a lot of things. So, we know the problem and the solution to this is the Young Engineer’s work force. This force should be the most creative and innovative way. This smartness should show other countries what India can achieve.
This workshop had so many activities involved. So many plays, intuitive and comprehensive understanding of various aspects of becoming an entrepreneurs and much more. This workshop has enlightened all of us. I felt this kind of a workshop could have been given conducted in my college so that this seed that is sowed in us would create many such trees in our nation. End of the day, we had a party time and a small send off. We were all given an honorarium amount of INR 20,000 each and Certificates for accomplishing our work satisfactorily.
Myself and Akhil happily came back to Bangalore, RVCE and shared our experiences with all our lecturers and friends. Each and every person including my HOD of ECE department, were excited and congratulated my grand and successful come back. Dear Friends, of course this was a fun filled and intuitive venture of my life in IIT Bombay. This internship has helped me understand where my strengths lie. It has just brought my inner spirit to venture into greater heights. I wish this kind of an opportunity would knock in every individual’s life one day or the other. Thanks to e-Yantra and team, IIT Bombay.
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