E-Paper
State-of-art virtual reality, ?mechatronics? lab at MNNIT soon
IN A step towards materialising Vision-2020 of the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and promoting advance research in the filed of Virtual Reality, Mechatronics, Robotics and Material Science, the Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT) is all set to establish a state-of-art high-end laboratory. The lab will be embellished with high performing equipment and will be constructed at cost of over Rs 6 crore.
IN A step towards materialising Vision-2020 of the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and promoting advance research in the filed of Virtual Reality, Mechatronics, Robotics and Material Science, the Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT) is all set to establish a state-of-art high-end laboratory.
The lab will be embellished with high performing equipment and will be constructed at cost of over Rs 6 crore.
In connection with developing the lab, a team of Department of Science and Technology (DST) including Indranil Chakarborty (DST) and Prof Amitav Ghosh (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur) visited MNNIT premises to make on the spot inspection of existing infrastructure and required infrastructure, recently.
It is worth mentioning that DST is the funding agency under Union Ministry of Science and Technology, which provides financial aid to technical institutions for carrying out advance research in emerging fields of science and technology in India.
MNNIT’s department of Applied Mechanics was selected for developing the lab after screening of proposals sent by departments of various institutes.
“The department of Applied mechanics was selected by DST for the visit on the basis of its existing infrastructure and proven track record in advance research in the field of material science,” informed MNNIT director Prof Arun Baran Samaddar.
Prof Samaddar said that the proposed lab will serve the objectives set by MNNIT for MTech course in Material Science and Bio-Medical Engineering that the Deemed University plans to start in the coming years.
“The lab will act as a facilitator for research in the uncovered fields like Mechatronics, Virtual Reality and Robotics,” added Prof Samaddar. Here it needs to be pointed out that due to lack of experimental facilities, MNNIT students mostly visit other Institutes like Department of Mineralogy and Petrology (Allahabad), IIT-Kanpur, IT-BHU (Varanasi), CGCRI (Kolkata) among others for fabrication and characterisation works.
Explaining the term ‘virtual reality’, Prof Samaddar said that it is a stream of science which will helps scientists to perform real and live experiments but in a virtual environment.
The emerging field of virtual reality could be used by scientists to perform experiments based on conditions in Mars and the Moon through Robots. In the same way a specialist surgeon can operate on a patient from a distant place with Robots through this medium.
During the inspection and the meeting of officials, head of MNNIT Applied Mechanics department Prof Triloki Nath put forth the ambitious plan before DST panel. The equipment and software that are planned for the laboratory includes ADAMS software with FEM, STADD Software, ATILA Software, ABACUS Software, LVDTs and Optical Sensing System.
The noise and vibration lab will be also upgraded with equipment like Multi-Channel PC based FFT Analyser, Sound Analysing system and Exciter Accilometer. A course on Dynamic Analysis too is being proposed for MTech (Applied Mechanics) having multifarious experiments. Similarly, a Bio-Medical Engineering Lab is also planned under the proposal.
