TECHTOP – 2009

Prize Winners

First Prize - CHAKSHUYAAN

Project CHAKSHUYAAN, a college sponsored project, is an inspiration drawn from the existing Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) technologies. This seed is being jointly nurtured by the students of Mechanical, Electrical and Electronics branches of Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeethem, Amritapuri Campus, Kerala, India. The aim of this project is to develop a state of the art unmanned, radio controlled VTOL aircraft, which includes GPS navigation facilities and an onboard high resolution camera with reconnaissance features, thus creating an autonomous entity that ensures absolute safety in flights.

It is proposed to equip the aircraft with microcontrollers that would facilitate its safe return to command site even if it has veered off its range. Such an accomplishment is sure to find applications in search-and-rescue operations with further research. The wheels of this endeavor were set into motion in October 2007, by our team, crystallizing an idea we had into a mathematical model. Based on these parameters, feasibility studies were conducted which gave us the expected positive results. As we moved on to the month of November we looked out for the components required and matched our theoretically calculated data, the details of which have been mentioned in this report.

During the month of December the Mechanical engineering students started work on a design for the aircraft with due help of and suggestions from experts in the field. The best of the first five designs has been chosen to make a mock model for further experiments and assessments. In the mean time the Electrical and Electronics students have done a detailed study of the control aspects of the prospective aircraft. By the first week of April, 2008, the E.C.E. students came out with a very rudimentary form of a spped controller as their mini project. This on further development will be utilized to control the D.C. motors on the aircraft. Around the same time the engine which started for the first time and ran successfully for a total of 20 minutes details of which will be added at a later stage. This project is now presently under Research Work category of our university.

Second Prize - Automation and Enhancement of Tea Manufacturing by controlled environment fermentation of tea and endpoint detection and gradation using image sensing.

The idea is to automate and control the tea fermentation process and therefore manufacture tea in an enhanced process which will guarantee the best quality of tea for a given region. Environment fluctuation and error prone manual gradation often leads to lower quality of tea. Our project aims to carry out the tea fermentation process in a controlled environment chamber. The end point of fermentation is detected manually till date and the gradation varies from person to person. With the help of digital image processing we will detect the end point of the fermentation process and maintain a standard.

Third Prize - SURVIELLANCE ROBOT FOR BOMB FINDING

What we are going to represent here is the different parts of the Surveillance Robot for bomb finding operation in a glance that can be controlled by a remote person which is one of the unique feature of this robot. The remote controlling is primarily based on the Radio Frequency mode. The RF remote control is with adequate range which is up to 150 meter, provided with proper a antenna which is good advantage besides, it the range is omnidirectional. The proposed Surveillance Robot can move in all four directions (forward, reverse, left and right as well). The Robot is provided with a foldable arm of three joints, these three sections are able to move in upward and downward direction. The base arm section gives the direction to the further arm sections; middle section sets the actual position of last section that is jaw section of arm, the jaw section works as hand of the robot which is provided with pick and place arrangement.

The decoder is being used for project base latched output. The remote control arrangement is designed so that, any can use it easily, each action of the robot requires one press of button i.e. by pressing one button an operator can perform only one operation. After releasing button that particular action will be stopped. In operation we can perform more than one action simultaneously. Another unique wireless feature of robot is a AV(Audio and Video) camera with very small dimensions. This camera is like a third eye of operator which can able to transmit the remote live video of field up to a receiver video display (LCD), placed at a far distance for the field of robot. This technique is very important when we required the information of enemy and no one can able to go through the field. The camera also very much needed for the search operation of any doubtful object. The camera can encodes transmitter line signal having 1.2 GHz frequency. The signal is received and decode to video display form. The AV signal is transmitted to video display. A proper diagram of the working prototype of Surveillance Robot including remote is as shown in fig. The entire project is splits into sections and each section is explained separately further.

KPP Nambiar Prize I By Keltronians – BELT SYSTEM FOR BODY SUPPORT

We know that health is the one of major issues of the world. Moreover, body problem like waist pain, back pain are become the part & parcel of today’s busy life. These pains are very common to all kind of professional and peoples including those who have to sit long duration before computers. And the people involved with the strenuous work activities like lifting or carrying of heavy weights or doing other similar hardships always needs frequent bending up or down of the body parts. This may often lead to various types of body disorders & vertebral dislocation etc.

Our belt system is solution of all these problems. This system as a supporting means is useful where either the persons are indulged with the drudgery, lifts heavy weights, works for long hours or needs frequent bending of the body, or in other way at all situations whether as pre-damage or post-damage precautionary measures before indulge in any drudgery. It is ray of hope for those worker, professional, labors that have to take drink /alcohol/wine or other painkiller to bear on their physical problem /pains. The working principle is very simple. It is designed such that is as we bent down the potential energy get stored in springs and this is used when we get up. In addition, there in another arrangement that minimizes the load backbone dishes. This belt is made-up of steel rod, spring materials and nylon strips. Its weight is just 950 grams. This belt can be affordable to all even poor people. The price of one belt is Rs.500 ($ 10 approximately). That is Cheaper than visit a doctor.

KPP Nambiar Prize II By Keltronians – THERMO FUEL FROM WASTE PLASTIC

SCOPE: Our project aims to solve the twin problem of environment pollution due to plastics and need for an alternative fuel source. The project thermofuel from waste plastics is a process where by scrap and waste plastics are converted in to synthetic fuel using liquefaction, pyrolysis and the catalytic breakdown of plastics which can produce upto 9500 litres of high grade synthetic fuel from 10 tones of waste plastic.

The system uses stock infeed chamber, catalytic converter, condensers, centrifuge, oil recoveryline, thermocouple, cooling water, off-gas cleaning and adulterant removal with WASTE PLASTICS as raw materials.The reactor which has two hole one at the top for collecting the vapour and the other for temperature measuring with 5500C withstanding capacity is where the waste plastics are put in.Pyrolysis is a process of thermal degradation in the absence of oxygen.plastic wasteplastic is continuously treated in a cylindrical chamber and the pyrolytic gases condensed in a specially-condensed system to yield a hydrocarbon distillate comprising straight and branched chain aliphatics, cyclic aliphatics and aromatic hydrocarbons. The resulting mixture is essentially equivalent to petroleum distillate. The plastic is pyrolised at 370C ? 420C and the pyrolysis gases are condensed to give a low sulphur content distillate.

PROCESS DESCRIPTION: About 1 kg of waste plastic of same kind (idpe/hdpe) is cut in to piece and dried. Waste plastics are loaded via a hot melt infeed system directly in to main pyrolysis chamber. The burner is started for heating the reactor . when the temperature reaches 2000C the vapour starts to come down to the condenser due to agitation and homogenize the feed stocks. The heating is continued for about 3 hours till the vapours stop collecting. The pyrolysis commences at the point of product of gasification and the non- plastic material fall to the bottom of the chamber. After 1 to 1 1\2 the plastics are completely decomposed. At that time the larger carbon molecules are

KPP Nambiar Prize By Keltronians(All Women) – SOLAR – DE- HUMID HYDRATOR

AIM/ INNOVATION: We aim to build a solar dehydrator that has been combined with a dehumidifier, which can be used by farmers, food processing corporations in rural developing countries. As we know the dehydrator (whose main function is to draw out water from a product) already exists and there is nothing new and impressive about it, so we plan to combine this dehydrator with a machine that could create a controlled humid climate, and then allow users to extract the dehydrated water and make it safe to drink.

OPERATION: A dehydrator removes the water that food contains through a chimney, or channel, in which the hot steam rises and escapes the heating chamber. We aim to harness the exhaust from a dehydrator and allow it to pass though another smaller channel, in which the steam will be condensed into drinking water. According to the basic laws of thermodynamics, a greater change in temperature will cause a faster moving current from hot to cold. This basic principle will allow the mechanism to keep a constant steady flow of air throughout the machine. The final product of this machine will be dried fruits and vegetables, along with a byproduct of fresh, clean water.

CONCLUSION: We will invent a dehydrator that has been combined with a dehumidifier, which can be used by farmers, food processing corporations, or bio-diesel corporations in rural developing countries. The dehydrator would effectively and efficiently dehydrate a product within few days, while also condensing the moisture out of the air for use by the cultivators as drinking water. It will have expandable capacity to grow with the increase of their businesses, yet low cost to the consumer.