Riding high on the recent success of being adjudged the Best Student ASME Section at IIT -
Sukriti Sapra, Co-ordinator.
Roorkee among the six other existing in India, Sukriti Sapra, the Coordinator for this semester, spoke to us about what the ‘American Society of Mechanical Engineers’, a la ASME –BITS Pilani chapter, is undertaking.
There are numerous events lined up for Apogee, and later. The total prize money that it will now give away borders on a sizeable figure of 1.5 lakh rupees, bolstered by its integration with ASME-India. The major crowd puller is bound to be the Invention Inventor’s Program. This kernel ASME program is an endeavour to bridge the ever-increasing gap between education and engineering. Essentially, participating companies have put up certain problem statements and the participants whose entries sound innovative and applicable will be invited to participate in the event. The companies shall mentor those selected, concluding with the development of a real prototype.
Unadulterated innovation has always been the very essence of Apogee, and going by that spirit is the ASME-India sponsored event, Student Design Exposition, or SDE. Besides, the $1000 prize money cannot help but act as bait. As the name suggests, SDE is a platform for budding inventors and caters to a vast array of topics, thus encouraging inter –disciplinary projects. Hopeful teams must incorporate a basic engineering theme, with ingenuity of design and approach being prerequisites.
For us lesser mortals, ASME is organizing an ‘Old Guard Presentation’, which involves the creation of a video, poster or web page. It has to be connected to any branch of engineering or an upcoming technology. In a nutshell, the better your presentation, the better are your chances of bagging the prize.
‘Section Speak’, as the name suggests, is where all the various sections of ASME will get together and give accounts of their various activities and undertakings. Currently, there is assured participation from all the six Indian sections while confirmation is still being awaited from the other three international sections, namely Taiwan, Singapore and Pakistan.
As far as projects go, about 30 different ideas were submitted, out of which 20 got selected. Two of these deserve special mention- Robocon and Shell Eco.
Robocon, or Robotic Contest, is a very fascinating annual tournament, where the participants have to develop multiple robots in order to complete a set of pre-meditated
Robocon - Hong Kong..
tasks in a given time span. These tasks are based around a central theme each year. Our indigenous Robocon team, having started work since October, is designing three bots adhering to this year’s theme “Peng On Dai Gat”. The eliminations are in March, while the finals are in August, at Hong Kong. The competition is bound to be tough, with almost 70 teams from across the country having registered already.
Unlike Robocon, which is about precision in a fixed time span, Shell Eco-Marathon is solely
What the marathon might have in store..
about efficiency. Started almost as a joke by some immensely bored scientists at a Shell Research Laboratory to see who could get the most miles out of a gallon, it has now blossomed into an international event that seeks to challenge students’ creativity and ingenuity to spring forth with prototypes to meet urban challenges.
ASME is in essence an innovation oriented society that aims to inculcate out of the box thinking abilities in its members and the general public alike, and is achieving this rather successfully and spectacularly.
