Amrita University’s Team Vijayanta Win Award at World Robot Summit 2021 for Their Search and Rescue Robot
Mumbai, Feburary 02, 2022: Vijayanta, a team of department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Amrita University), Amritapuri, has won the Best-in-Class Dexterity Award under the Standard Disaster Robotics Challenge of Disaster Robotics Category held as part of World Robot Summit (WRS 2021), Tokyo, Japan for their innovative search and rescue robot. The award-winning robot, Paripreksya, was developed with the help of the team from Humanitarian Technology (HuT), an engineering research lab of the university under guidance of Dr. Rajesh Kannan Megalingam, Director, HuT Labs.
The initial rounds of the competition attracted the participation of nearly 120 teams from all over the world. However, from India only two teams were selected for the finals, and both were from Amrita University. In the finals that attracted the participation of top 10 teams, Vijayanta emerged as the winner in its category. The summit was initially supposed to be held in Jul-Aug 2020, however, due to pandemic, it got postponed to 2021 and teams participated remotely.
Paripreksya is designed to speed up search and rescue operations
at the disaster zones that are inaccessible or not safe for human rescue teams
to venture. The robot can increase the situation awareness of relief workers by
providing them views of the disaster zones, thanks to its supreme disaster area
mapping and maneuvering abilities. The robot can move on uneven and harsh
surfaces. Paripreksya’s advanced sensors help it to carry out damage assessment
operations accurately. The robot also has the capability of rescue and
transport victims from the disaster site to safer zones.
Commenting about the winning the award, Dr. Rajesh Kannan
Megalingam, Director, HuT Labs, said, “We are very proud of our team at HuT
Labs who have come up with a life-saving innovation and demonstrated their
ability to design and develop robotics of international standard. We believe
that students should be encouraged to apply their knowledge to solve real-world
problems. The modularity, mobility, and robustness of the robot have won them
this prestigious award at an international forum. We wish our students all the
best with their future endeavors of innovation.”
Every year hundreds and thousands of lives are lost during natural
and manmade calamities such as earthquakes, mine accidents, and nuclear
disasters. At least one-third of the lives lost can be saved by deploying
robots for swift search and response rescue operations, as robots can enter
harsh and dangerous environments to provide on-time communication, and
medication for survivors. They can also help contain further damages.
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