While autonomous (driver-less) automobile technology is being tried and tested worldwide, a 13-member team from India’s premier Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kharagpur is making waves nationwide with its ground-breaking dual-mode (manual + autonomous) bicycle.

The IIT Kharagpur team comprising Ayush Pandey, Subhamoy Mahajan, Adarsh, Dhananjay, Aniket, Vikas, Shubh, Aashay, Hrishyank, Sourabh Dash, Arnab Mondal, P.N. Vamshi and Himanshu Chaudhary, won the bumper Rs.5 lakh prize for its revolutionary ‘i-Bike’ in KPIT Sparkle 2016 staged in Pune on February 2.

Organised by the Pune-based Kirtane & Pandit Info Technologies (estb. 1990) — a tech consulting and product engineering services & solutions provider — in association with the 162-year-old College of Engineering, Pune, the competition based on the theme ‘Smart Solutions for Energy and Transportation’ attracted 1,700 entries from over 10,000 students in 500 engineering colleges countrywide. Of them, 54 teams made it to the grand finale at College of Engineering, where product designs and innovations were reviewed and evaluated by a high-powered jury comprising eminent scientists, industrialists and academics.

The prize-winning i-Bike looks like an ordinary bicycle. But it runs on electric power and can self-navigate to a location specified in an SMS sent from an android device. It uses a global positioning system (GPS) for automatic manoeuvre, and responds to the GPS coordinates of the destination received via SMS.

“We had ideated the i-bike way back in 2014 bearing in mind the limited transport options of differently-abled, especially leg/arm amputees with steering/pedalling difficulties. Our job was to design the final prototype working model within three months. In the process, we learned the value of teamwork as we wrote endless algorithms, customised and sourced the mechanical parts to put the i-Bike together,” recalls Ayush Pandey, currently a fourth-year electrical engineering student and team spokesperson.

Looking to the future, the team is focused on filing a patent for the i-Bike (current cost: Rs.30,000) with the intent of marketing the innovation. “We are now working on reducing the per-unit cost to make our invention market-friendly,” says Ayush.

Way to go!

Baishali Mukkherjee (Kolkata)