Mean Machines: The DCE student team with their car Fledge. (Above) Ajit Kumar with his robotic vacuum cleaner

Innovation is the new buzzword in India’s premier campuses. It is as if Gen Y has become Gen ‘Why,’ asking incisive questions, pushing beyond the obvious, thinking out of the box and, in the process, coming up with innovative products and re-inventing technologies.

Sample this. Seven third-year students of mechanical engineering at the Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) have developed a hybrid electric vehicle which they call the Fledge. It’s an environment-friendly car with near-zero emissions. It also won the first prize in Alternative Fuels and Hybrid Vehicles (student category) at Tour de Sol, the international green car competition organised by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association at Saratoga Springs, New York, US, recently.

Says Siddharth Arora, one of the students who was involved with Project Fledge. “The Indian automobile industry has been dormant with regard to alternative fuel vehicles and there needed to be an effort at the student level to shake things up.” Apart from cutting fuel consumption, the car is low on emissions, claim the students, adding that it is ideal for areas like large hospital zones, airports and institutional campuses.

But it is not just in cars that students are showing their innovative mettle. Vineet Nagrath, a third year computer science and engineering student at Bharati Vidyapeeth’s College of Engineering, New Delhi, has engineered a robotic arm that is aimed at developing a fully automated, intelligent system that can interact with its surroundings and perform jobs that a normal human arm can. “I have always been fascinated by robots and wanted to do something for the disabled too.” The mechanical arm (still at a prototype stage) can be fitted on a disabled person and has the potential to function like a normal arm, with much greater mobility than a prosthetic arm.

If students are showing their innovative flair, their professors and their institutes too are lending them every support. “Our ideas would never have taken concrete shape without the support of R. Chandrasekhar, our head of the department at M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore,” says Abhishek Rajpal, who came up with a robotic vacuum cleaner that can be controlled through a PC as part of his final year project.

Rajpal graduated this year and is now working for TISCO. Adds Ajit Kumar, his partner in the project, who now works at Kirloskar Oil Engines, “Despite being students of mechanical engineering, we were never prohibited from exploring topics in other streams of engineering.”

The encouragement to indulge in cross-functional thinking seems to have paid off. Avinash Prabhakar, a third year electrical engineering student of Amal Jyothi College of Engineering, Kottayam, and the brain behind an ingenious ‘password security system’, too is deeply appreciative of his institute’s efforts to encourage him. “They have supported me to the extent of postponing my semester exams so that I could come and showcase my invention at the Infocomm 2006 at Calcutta.” Prabhakar’s invention can be used for access-controlled doors and can control up to 10,000 equipment at a time.

The good news is that for most students who are working on innovative projects, funding is usually not a problem. The institute backs them and sometimes the projects win support from the government or a corporate as well. Says Rajpal, “The mechanical department of M.S. Ramaiah has 1,100 students on its rolls. At any given time, there are at least 46 ongoing projects. Despite these numbers, our college gives us a decent sum as our project money.”

The team behind the green car, Fledge, also managed to get a generous sponsorship from the department of science and technology (DST), government of India.

However, not all who are working on their dream projects are quite so lucky. Says Abirlal Biswas and Pramit Ghosh, department of computer science and engineering, Calcutta University (CU), and the creators of an ‘image-based security system,’ “Since we aren’t getting the requisite funds from CU, we are unable to develop the prototype into a marketable product.” Biswas and Ghosh are now trying to get the corporate sector interested in their project.

Says Anil Wali, managing director, Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, “The commercialisation phase of these innovations is often hampered by the lack of funds. The problems are intensified because there are not many venture funds to promote start-ups.”

However, irrespective of what funds or resource crunch they face, most young innovators are upbeat about their work. And most of them want to go into the field of research. Says Nagrath, “I want to go for my masters degree to Germany and I hope the robotic arm project will be a stepping stone in that direction.” (Independent projects generally evoke a favourable response from universities abroad.)

Entrepreneurship is another natural choice for these student inventers. Says Arora, “We want to set up an indigenous plant to manufacture our green car. But ideally, I would prefer some relevant experience in industry before taking the plunge.”

Clearly, these bright sparks are intent on going places.