CSI Communications - Computer Society Of India

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52 pages including cover
CSI Communications
ISSN 0970-647X
Knowledge Digest for IT Community
Volume No. 40 | Issue No. 4 | July 2016 ` 50/-
COVER STORY
Affordable Robotics for
Innovative Education and
Outreach 7
www.csi-india.org
TECHNICAL TRENDS
Current trends in
Development of Intelligent
Robotic Systems for
Manufacturing 19
RESEARCH FRONT
Internet Of Robotics Things
(IORT) – Embedded IOT
Enabled Robotics Technology
22
ROBOTICS
ARTICLE
Artificial Intelligence –
Are we digging our own
Graves? 30
INNOVATIONS IN IT
A Model for Determining
Software Product
Performance Maturity 36
Know Your CSI
Executive Committee (2016-17/18)
»
President
Dr. Anirban Basu
309, Ansal Forte, 16/2A,
Rupena Agrahara, Bangalore
Email : [email protected]
Vice-President
Mr. Sanjay Mohapatra
D/204, Kanan Tower,
Patia Square, Bhubaneswar
Hon. Treasurer
Mr. R. K. Vyas
70, Sanskrit Nagar Society,
Plot No. 3, Sector -14, Rohini, Delhi
Immd. Past President
Prof. Bipin V. Mehta
Director, School of Computer
Studies, Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad
Hon. Secretary
Prof. A. K. Nayak
Indian Institute of Business
Management, Budh Marg, Patna
Nomination Committee (2016-2017)
Dr. Santosh Kumar Yadav
New Delhi
Mr. Sushant Rath
SAIL, Ranchi
Region-I
Mr. Shiv Kumar
National Informatics Centre
Ministry of Comm. & IT, New Delhi
Region-II
Mr. Devaprasanna Sinha
73B, Ekdalia Road,
Kolkata
Region-III
Dr. Vipin Tyagi
Jaypee University of Engineering and
Technology, Guna - MP
Region-IV
Mr. Hari Shankar Mishra
Doranda, Ranchi, Jharkhand
Region-V
Mr. Raju L. Kanchibhotla
Shramik Nagar, Moulali,
Hyderabad, India
Region-VI
Dr. Shirish S. Sane
Vice-Principal, K K Wagh Institute of
Engg Education & Research,Nashik,
Division-I : Hardware
Prof. M. N. Hoda
Director, BVICAM, Rohtak Road
New Delhi
Division-II : Software
Prof. P. Kalyanaraman
VIT University, Vellore
Division-III : Applications
Mr. Ravikiran Mankikar
Jer Villa, 3rd Road, TPS 3,
Santacruz (East), Mumbai
Division-IV : Communications
Dr. Durgesh Kumar Mishra
Prof. (CSE) & Director-MIC, SAIT
Indore
Division-V : Education and Research
Dr. Suresh C. Satapathy
ANITS, Vishakhapatnam
Chairman
Mr. Ved Parkash Goel
DRDO, Delhi
Regional Vice-Presidents
Region-VII
Dr. K. Govinda
Division Chairpersons
an individual.
2 are friends.
3 is company.
more than 3 makes a society. The
arrangement of these elements makes
the letter ‘C’ connoting ‘Computer
Society of India’.
the space inside the letter ‘C’ connotes
an arrow - the feeding-in of information
or receiving information from a computer.
CSI Headquarter :
Samruddhi Venture Park, Unit No. 3,
4th Floor, MIDC, Andheri (E),
Mumbai-400093, Maharashtra, India
Phone : 91-22-29261700
Fax : 91-22-28302133
CSI Education Directorate :
CIT Campus, 4th Cross Road, Taramani,
Chennai-600 113, Tamilnadu, India
Phone : 91-44-22541102
Fax : 91-44-22541103 : 91-44-22542874
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CSI COMMUNICATIONS | July 2016
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CSI Registered Offi ce :
302, Archana Arcade, 10-3-190,
St. Johns Road,
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Phone : 91-40-27821998
www.csi-india.org
CSI COMMUNICATIONS
VOLUME NO. 40 • ISSUE NO. 4 • JULY 2016
Chief Editor
DR. A K NAYAK
Editor
DR. VIPIN TYAGI
Published by
MR. SANJAY MOHAPATRA
For Computer Society of India
Design, Print and
Dispatch by
GP OFFSET PVT. LTD.
Contents
Cover Story
Affordable Robotics for Innovative Education and Outreach
Shunmugham R. Pandian
7
Robotics in Surgery
12
Autonomic Unmanned Aerial Vehicles : A Computer Vision Perspective
14
Shruti Shashi Kumar and Ajit Joshi
Siddhartha Narayana Ram Prasad Padhy, Suman Kumar Choudhury and Pankaj K. Sa
Technical Trends
Current Trends in Development of Intelligent Robotic Systems for Manufacturing
Sankha Deb
19
Research Front
Internet Of Robotics Things (IORT) – Embedded IOT Enabled Robotics Technology
22
Energy harvesting for Micro/Nano Robots using a Micro Scale Vertical Axis Wind
Turbine Farm based on Movement of Fish in a School
26
S. S. Aravinth, P. Sachidhanandam, R. Karthick and M. Senthilkumar
Sreekant Damodara and N. N. Sharma
Articles
Artificial Intelligence – Are we digging our own Graves?
30
Stream Control Transmission Protocol
33
Sanjay Bhatia
Anurag Jagetiya and C. RamaKrishna
Innovations in IT
A Model for Determining Software Product Performance Maturity
36
Real-time Unified Process Dashboard
38
Rajiv Thanawala, Mohan Jayaramappa and Sreejith Balakrishnan
Manoj Soman
Please note:
CSI Communications is published by Computer
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Views and opinions expressed in the CSI
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PLUS
Application Form for Individual / Life Membership
40
Book Review
43
Brain Teaser
44
CSI Reports
45
Student Branches News
48
Printed and Published by Mr. Sanjay Mohapatra on Behalf of Computer Society of India, Printed at G.P. Offset Pvt. Ltd. Unit81, Plot-14, Marol Co-Op. Industrial Estate, off Andheri Kurla Road, Andheri (East), Mumbai 400059 and Published from
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Tel. : 022-2926 1700 • Fax : 022-2830 2133 • Email : [email protected] Chief Editor: Dr. A. K. Nayak
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Editorial
Dear Fellow CSI Members,
Robotics is a branch of science that combines a range of
fields like Computer Science, Mechanical, Electronics, and
Electrical Engineering and deals with the design, production,
and operation of robots. According to Robot Institute of
America, 1979, a Robot is “A re-programmable, multifunctional
mechanical manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools,
or specialized devices through various programmed motions for
the performance of a variety of tasks”. By mimicking a lifelike
appearance or automating movements, a robot may convey a
sense of intelligence or thought of its own. The idea of a device
like Robot is very old. Aristotle once wrote “If every instrument
could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will
of others ... if the shuttle could weave, and the pick touch the
lyre, without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not
need servants”. However the word “Robot” was first used in a
play about the futuristic robots, in 1921, by the Czech play writer
Karel Capek, that take over the world. This term was based on
the root robota, which means servatude or forced labor. After
translation of the play in English the ‘Robot’ term was included
in English language in 1923.
their research that will
help in designing a
scheme for propulsion
of
individual
and
swarm of micro/nano
robots
which
are
propitious to flying/
swimming.
In Article category
we have included
“Artificial Intelligence
– Are we digging our
own Graves?” by S. Bhatia that gives various aspects of Artificial
Intelligence. The next article “Stream Control Transmission
Protocol : The Origin of Multihoming” by Anurag Jagetiya C.
RamaKrishna describes stream control transmission protocol.
Innovations in IT series contains “A Model for Determining
Software Product Performance Maturity” by R. Thanawala,
M. Jayaramappa and S. Balakrishnan that introduces a
Performance Maturity Model (PMM), that classifies software
product performance into various levels. In another article
“Real-time Unified Process Dashboard” M. Soma describes a
tool that can help in BPS Service Provider Operation as well
BPS Customer leadership team’s armor enabling better control
over operations and improving chances of avoiding SLA breach
and subsequent monetary penalties.
Today Robotics is a form of automation that is helping mankind in
various ways resulting gain in productivity. Difficult, dangerous,
monotonous, or tedious tasks formerly performed by humans,
are now often carried by robots. Moreover, robots can be used to
replace humans in dangerous situations.
Keeping in mind the importance of Robotics in today’s context,
the publication committee of Computer Society of India, selected
the theme of CSI Communications (The Knowledge Digest for IT
Community) June 2016 issue as “Robotics”.
This issue also contains Crossword, Book Review, CSI activity
reports from chapters, student branches and Calendar of events.
Our sincere thanks to Dr. Sankha Deb, IIT Kharagpur, Prof. N.
N. Sharma, BITS Pilani, Dr. Shunmugham R. Pandian, IITDM,
Chennai for accepting our request to share their expertise in
Robotics.
In this issue the first Cover Story, “Affordable Robotics for
Innovative Education and Outreach” by S. R. Pandian presents
an outline of the potential of affordable robots in education
and community outreach using open source hardware and free
software technologies, along with representative examples. Next
article in this category “Robotics In Surgery” by S. S. Kumar and
A. Joshi describes the use of robotics in real life application like
surgery. Cover story “Autonomic Unmanned Aerial Vehicles:
A Computer Vision Perspective” by S. Narayana, R. P. Padhy,
S. K. Choudhury and P. K. Sa describes that how robots’ help
increases productivity and decision making.
I am thankful to entire Execute, in particular to Prof. A. K. Nayak
and Prof. M. N. Hoda for their continuous support in bringing this
issue successfully.
On behalf of publication committee, I wish to express my sincere
gratitude to all authors and reviewers for their contributions and
support to this issue.
In Technical Trends, “Current trends in development of Intelligent
Robotic Systems for Manufacturing”, S. Deb presents some of
the current trends in development of intelligent robotic systems
for manufacturing.
I hope this issue will be successful in providing various aspects of
Robotics to IT community. The next issue of CSI Communications
will be on the theme “Virtual Reality”. We invite the contributions
from CSI members who are working in the area of Virtual Reality.
In Research Front the first article “Internet of Robotics Things
(IORT) – Embedded IoT Enabled Robotics Technology” by S. S.
Aravinth, P. Sachidhanandam, R. Karthick, M. Senthilkumar,
gives an implementation of the valet parking system using fire
bird v robot using a phased approach. In next article “Energy
Harvesting for Micro/Nano Robots using a Micro Scale Vertical
Axis Wind Turbine Farm based on Movement of Fish in a School”,
S. Damodara and N.N. Sharma have presented the outcome of
Finally, we look forward to receive the feedback, contribution,
criticism, suggestions from our esteemed members and readers
at [email protected].
With best wishes,
Dr. Vipin Tyagi
Editor
Dr. Vipin Tyagi, Jaypee University of Engineering and Technology, Guna - MP, [email protected]
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www.csi-india.org
President’s
Message
01 July 2016
Dear CSI members,
For the last three months, we have been working on improving the working
of CSI, bringing in more transparency in management, stopping all wasteful
expenditures and giving more benefits to our members. It is a huge task and
cannot be done as quickly as we would like. However we have started the process
and started reviewing earlier arrangements and evaluating if they have been
beneficial to the interests of CSI.
Due to attrition of employees, we have recruited two youngsters in CSI Education
Directorate in Chennai who have been assigned to work actively in marketing CSI
among academic institutions and streamline the database.
Over the years, CSI has signed MOUs with various organizations like British Computer Society, Singapore Computer
Society, ISACA etc. Most of these are due for renewal. Our efforts are on to revive the MOUs and implement the
terms. We also need to play a proactive role in different organizations in which CSI has representation. After taking
over as President, I came to know that CSI has representation in several government bodies like AICTE, Bureau of
Indian Standards etc. In some cases, we had nominated our representatives who did not attend the meetings. Due
to this our image has been tarnished. I have been personally working on increasing CSI representation in different
prestigious organizations. We will soon be asking for selection of CSI members to represent us in different bodies.
This will be done as and when nominations are asked for.
We have put up the list of Distinguished Consultants in the CSI web site. The list includes all Members who had
applied and are our Fellows. SEARCC has announced International Awards in three categories. We have asked
nominations from our Members and selection will be made by three different Committees comprising of ExecCom
Members and does not include Office Bearers of CSI. They will be selecting two nominations in each category and
we will forwarding these nominations. However, as announced members can apply directly by paying prescribed fee.
Unfortunately, most of the Chapters and SIGs are not active except very few. I have been trying to activate them. The
professional activities carried out by a Chapter/ SIG depends upon the leadership. We have to choose leaders who
can devote time for the activities, have good networking skills, and have skills in organizing events on advanced
topics. Good events held under the banner of CSI will improve our image and can attract more members.
Days are changing and we need to work in line with Government of India’s policies particularly on Smart Cities, Make
in India, Digital India etc. Innovation needs to be encouraged and we are thinking on building an incubation center.
Let me reiterate that CSI gives opportunities for professional growth of our members. We can do lot more as we
have flexibility in operations. For this, we would like to encourage suggestions from our members on how to improve
further. They can send mails with their suggestions to [email protected]/ [email protected].
Best wishes,
Dr. Anirban Basu
President, CSI
Dr. Anirban Basu, Bangalore, [email protected]
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Vice President’s
Desk
Dear CSIians,
COMPUTER SOCIETY OF INDIA (CSI) is going through an evolution phase
in a world of customization and instant gratification, being flexible will become
increasingly important to our sustainability. Sustainability is all about three core
values Human, Environment and Economic wellbeing. All of these are interrelated.
They are not independent. On the contrary, they are very much interdependent.
There are large trade-offs between all three values. Not all the three values are
equal, Human and Environment wellbeing goals to be achieved. Economic wellbeing
is a mean to be able to achieve sustainability and to maintain so over time.
On the above note, I would like to request all ExecCom Members, Chapter Chairman & MC Members to devote their
valuable time for the membership growth of CSI at different levels. We are also planning to take up more initiatives
under the noble leadership of Dr. Anirban Basu to boost up the societal activities at various levels. Along with the
activities some initiatives are planned for the coming years in the field of skill development in the area of Computer
science & IT.
Our prime focus is to setup the new Student Branches in various regions and involve more number of students in
CSI and conduct workshops, seminars, guest lectures in collaboration with our Institutional members and Corporate
members for our beloved student members by creating awareness on the emerging trends in CS & IT.
For a sustainable CSI, I strongly believe on five factors i.e., Member Recruitment, Member Assimilation, Member
Engagement, Member Retention and Member Evangelist. As this is a process, all the factors are taken into account
by all the OBs at National Level and expecting an ample support from all Region/State/Chapter level members to
understand the process and contribute their efforts accordingly.
In a conclusion note, I would like to state that, the training strategy for strong, sustainable and balanced growth
addresses strategic issues as well as practical arrangements. It provides a platform for further exchange of ideas and
experiences among a wide range of institutions, enterprises, experts from all members.
“KarmanyeVadhikaraste Ma PhaleshuKadachana,
Ma Karma PhalaHeturBhurmaTeySangostvaAkarmani”
(Bhagwat Gita: Chapter Two verse 47)
“You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider
yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.”
For feedback & suggestions please write to - [email protected].
With kind regards
Sanjay Mohapatra
Vice President, CSI
Cell : 09861010656
Mr. Sanjay Moahapatra, Bhubaneswar, [email protected]
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www.csi-india.org
COVER STORY
Affordable Robotics for Innovative Education
and Outreach
Shunmugham R. Pandian
Department of Electronics Engineering, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing-Kancheepuram, Chennai
Robotics is one of the major and disruptive technologies of our times, with significant impact on economic
and social development. Yet, India significantly lags in research, development, and deployment of robots. As
machines in general and robots in particular are very appealing to the imagination of children and youth,
efforts are being taken the world over in introducing robots to make all levels of education creative and
innovative. In this paper, an outline of the potential of affordable robots in education and community outreach
using open source hardware and free software technologies is presented, along with representative examples.
Introduction
The field of robotics was born in
the 1950s with the development of
multi-functional,
reprogrammable
manipulators for use on the factory
floor. Major use of robots initially was
for 3D jobs: Dull, Dirty, or Dangerous.
Robots facilitated rapid growth of
flexible or soft automation and led
to rapid improvements in industrial
productivity, while also causing loss of
manufacturing jobs due to automation
[1].
Robots moved outside the factory
floor, acquiring mobility in the field,
underwater and air. The primary means
of locomotion have been wheels,
tracks, and legs in the case of field
robots. Humanoid robots that mimic
human performance remain the holy
grail of robotics. Multi-legged, animaltype mobile robots are also under
development as load-carrying mules to
support soldiers.
Mobile robots were initially mainly
used for monitoring and surveillance,
and later came to be fitted with on-board
manipulators. Precise, coordinated
control
of
vehicles-manipulator
systems is fairly straightforward in the
case of field robots (e.g., bomb defusing
robots). Remotely operated vehicles
(ROVs) are also often fitted with one or
two manipulators, and research is active
on extending underwater manipulation
and
intervention
capabilities
to
autonomous underwater vehicles [2].
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are
also being equipped with manipulators,
making them dexterous [3].
State-of-art research in robotics
is now more focused on autonomous
robots, by providing robots with
capabilities of learning, adaptation,
intelligence, and cognition [4]. Selfdriving vehicles are also a major type
of autonomous robots and have made
come a long way since the 2005 DARPA
Grand Challenge [5].
Despite the fascination of the
public with robots and their important
role in modern industry and services
sectors, the field of robotics is still very
much underdeveloped in India. There
are no major Indian manufacturers of
industrial manipulators, and research
and development in robotics is largely
limited to a few government laboratories
and higher educational institutes. While
several robotics startups have come in
recent years, the numbers of state-ofart robots in India are quite limited, and
largely imported and so very expensive.
A concerted national level effort in
robotics education is urgently needed
to train a creative workforce capable of
research, development, and production
in nationally crucial areas like industrial
robots (manipulators and guided
vehicles), autonomous robots, drones,
underwater vehicles and manipulators,
etc.
Robotics education and R&D
are highly multidisciplinary, involving
materials selection and mechanical
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design, electronic and computer
hardware, control and software, and
increasingly data science. Therefore,
robotics education in our higher
educational institutions must be
encouraged through inter-disciplinary
coursework, thesis research, and
extracurricular projects (e.g., through
Robotics Clubs, Maker Spaces, and so
on).
Another area in which India lags
developed countries is outreach: this
relates to synergy between research
institutions and higher education on the
one hand, and schools and community
on the other. Outreach can raise
technological literacy among the public
and children, and inspire the pursuit
of excellence in S&T and innovative
education. For instance, the US
National Science Foundation which is
the world’s leading agency sponsoring
fundamental research and education
in science and engineering, mandates
that all research grant proposals
satisfy a second, Broader Impacts
criterion, in addition to the primary
criterion of Intellectual Merit, in order
to receive funding. Examples of broader
impacts include building educational
talent, improving society, international
cooperation, and outreach [6].
As children and youth find machines
in general, and robots in particular very
appealing and exciting, research and
education in robotics lend themselves
naturally to community and schools
COVER STORY
outreach. Robotics technologies are
also part of the emerging Citizen Science
in many countries.
Affordable Robotics Education
A 2013 study by McKinsey
Consulting identified advanced robotics
and semi-autonomous/ autonomous
vehicles as two of the twelve major
disruptive technologies of our times
[7]. Since robotic systems involve
integration of sensors, actuators,
controllers, and increasingly mobile/
wireless networking, Internet, and
analytics, education and experience in
robotics also helps with several other
technologies in the list: Mobile Internet,
Internet of Things, Cloud technology,
Next-generation genomics (as tools),
3D printing, Advanced oil and gas
exploration and recovery (as tools) and
Renewable energy. These disruptive
technologies provide India with an
estimated $20 trillion opportunity in
innovation and economic development
[8].
India has a large youth population
(so-called demographic dividend) who
must be provided gainful employment.
In this regard, the manufacturing
sector offers promise for graduates and
dropouts of colleges, polytechnics, ITIs,
and high schools, since with increasing
automation of software and knowledge
work (another disruptive technology
in the McKinsey list), the hitherto
productive information technology
(IT) sector cannot be expected to
provide major employment to this,
predominantly mofussil and rural,
vernacular-speaking segment of the
Indian youth population.
As China’s population ages rapidly
and its factory wages keep rising, an
estimated 80 million manufacturing
jobs are expected to be outsourced
from China to other countries, including
India. Semiconductor electronic manufacturing alone is expected to create
28 million new jobs by 2020. This
achievement will be remarkable, if
we compare the fact that the entire IT
industry in India has created 3.1 million
jobs.
Realizing the magnitude of this
opportunity, the Indian government has
recently introduced major initiatives
such as Make in India, Startup India,
Digital India, and Skills India. However, a
significant constraint in achieving these
goals is that the Indian educational
system even in a practical discipline
like engineering is largely passive, textbook based, and teacher-centric. The
popular teaching learning process in
India is still based on the chalk and talk
paradigm.
In developed countries like the
USA, there is an increasing emphasis
on introducing robotics as early as first
year to maintain interest of students in
engineering and improve retention [9].
Robots are also part of the curriculum as
early as middle schools, through handson learning in design, electronics, and
programming. Competitions such as
FIRST Robotics and FIRST Lego League
are organized for high schools and
middle school students respectively,
as part of STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering,
and
Mathematics)
curriculum, so that the workforce of the
future will be creative and innovative.
As robotics often involves digital art
and interactive/physical computing, it is
also part of the so-called STEAM (STEM
+ Arts) initiatives to promote creative
and artistic thinking in schools.
Many of the robotics learning
activities abroad are based on
commercial kits like Lego Mindstorms
and Vex Robotics which cost around
$450 (more than Rs 30,000). However, in
India about one-third of the population
earns less than a dollar a day, while
two-thirds of the population lives on
less than two dollars a day. Therefore,
our robotics education at school level
must be designed and developed to be
affordable, accessible, and available
to these less resourceful sections of
population at the bottom of the pyramid.
Open Source Hardware and Software
for Affordable Robotics
Over the past few decades, major
developments in materials, electronics
and manufacturing have resulted in
ever decreasing cost, size, and power
consumption on the one hand, and ever
increasing capability, portability, and
utility of components and subsystems
like
actuators/motors,
sensors,
computers, controllers, and peripherals
like memory, batteries and (wireless)
networks. Therefore, there is now a
wave of democratization of technology,
benefiting the citizens of developing
countries like India. A prime example
of this trend is the prevalence of low8u
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cost mobile phones, many of them
smart, with impact on communication,
business, and services like healthcare.
An interesting comparison of the
decreasing cost and increasing power
of hardware is shown in Table I. It
compares the technical specifications
of the guidance computer for the Apollo
moon landing project, considered the
most expensive engineering project in
human history, with a common 32-bit
microcontroller.
Table I: Example of democratization of
technology
Specs
Apollo Guidance LPC1343 MicroComputer
controller
CPU
2 MHz
72 MHz
RAM
4 KB
8 + 32 KB
ROM
72 KB
1 MB
Weight
40 kg
~ 2 grams
Cost
$110 billion
$4.50
Another major trend, particularly
over the past decade, is the availability
of low-cost open source hardware and
free, open source software (FOSS).
The rapid developments in web
technologies and mobile apps have
further strengthened these trends, and
been enabled by availability of low cost
of broadband networks and wireless
communication.
A major advantage of open source
hardware and software is the vastly
reduced efforts and time needed for
design, prototyping, and realization of
new and innovative products, systems,
and technologies. The widespread
availability of low-cost 3D printers,
3D scanners, and laser cutters, and
services for prototyping and low volume
manufacturing services (such as CNC
machining centers, injection molding
machines, and even 3D metal printers)
has greatly aided this development.
The open source movement provides
valuable sources like pre-existing
designs for mechanical construction
and electronic circuits, software
development tools like frameworks and
application programming interfaces, as
well as an expanding online community
of worldwide users who provide help
and feedback. The Internet is also
a major source of knowledge and
information for aspiring roboticists,
makers, inventors and innovators,
and product designers. Further, the
www.csi-india.org
COVER STORY
World Wide Web provides valuable
opportunities
for
commercializing
new products, and crowdsourcing of
potential entrepreneurs and startups.
As a result, there have
been
major movements of Do It Yourself
(DIY) and Build Your Own (BYO) for
building innovations, inventions, and
commercial high-tech products. A
few areas in which this development
has been particularly felt is robotics,
mechatronics, embedded systems,
Internet of Things, as well as low-cost
development of laboratory experimental
systems and modules for science and
engineering education in universities,
colleges, polytechnics, and industrial
training institutes, as well as schools,
e.g., [10].
Additionally, robot building across
the domains of ground, aerial, and
underwater vehicles offers economies
of scale, in the sense that some of the
subsystems and components used
in one domain can be used for robot
construction in other domains (e.g.,
after waterproofing). Therefore, faculty
and students can reuse both hardware
and software among their robots.
Robots, at least at the level
of student projects and laboratory
experimental modules, lend themselves
to design and construction with
inexpensive, commercial off-the-shelf
(COTS). Therefore, they are a good
example of frugal or jugaadh technology
and innovations, helping change and
improve society [11]. Project-based
learning of robotics and mechatronics
is also an example of playful learning
[12].
Examples of Affordable Robots for
Education and Outreach
In this section, we provide a few
illustrative examples of DIY mobile
robots and manipulators developed in
the author’s laboratory for research,
education, and outreach. Due to
limitations of space, only an overview
of the robot systems is given here.
Additional details will be made available
in near future at www.iiitdm.ac.in/
MHRDTLC/
The basic problem of robot design
and building can be considered as
one of motor control of a mechanical
platform. For example, two mobile
robots of wheeled type are shown in
Figure 1. The robots were demonstrated
to the visitors (students, staff, and
public including school children) during
Republic Day celebrations at IIITDMKancheepuram in January 2016. The
cylindrical robot in the foreground is
powered by two geared DC motors
coupled to rear wheels. A single caster
wheel at the front enables zero-degree
turns of the robot. The visiting children
were able to control the robot using a
commercial video game controller,
as well as an Android mobile phone
application.
hoisting the national flag on the eve
of Independence Day celebrations on
campus in August 2015. For most of
the spectators, this was their very first
encounter with an actual drone. The
DIY drone was built with inexpensive
COTS, and was initially controlled
using the open source ArduPilot Mega
controller. Recently, the controller has
been upgraded to the more advanced
Pixhawk autopilot system.
Fig. 3 : Drone flying national flag
Fig.1 : Mobile robots controlled by children
The mobile robot in the background
is a wheeled mobile robot that served
as a proof of concept prototype of a selfdriving vehicle for campus navigation,
under development. The schematic of
the vehicle is shown in Figure 2, and
currently we are upgrading the control
to navigation of a compact car-sized
autonomous vehicle.
The basic sensors shown in Figure
2 for the self-driving vehicle are being
used in other types of mobile robots,
e.g., the quadcopter-type drone shown
in Figure 3. The drone here is shown
The GPS module and webcam used
in the self-driving vehicle prototype
have again been reused in a simple,
low-cost remote controlled (RC) boat
(Fig. 4) and a remotely operated vehicle
system (Fig. 5).
Fig. 4. Remote controlled boat
Fig.2. Architecture of prototype of self-driving vehicle
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COVER STORY
ROV
Cholan
is
low-cost,
observation class, mini-ROV fitted with
on-board camera and LED light inside
a water-proof hull and is designed for
operation in depths up to 100 meters.
It is planned for use in local and
regional aquatic environments, mainly
for marine archaeological and water
quality monitoring. It will also be used
as a testbed for research on mini-AUVs.
cans. The robots will be equipped with
on-board, air quality monitoring and
display kits for intimating public about
the pollution levels in their environment
and their health implications [14]. A
schematic of the
Fig. 7 : Robot control from school
The children can use low-cost
virtual reality goggles, and get haptic
feedback in their controllers when
the robots collide with each other
or the racing track edges (Figure 8).
This provides them an entertaining
experience. It is planned to post online
detailed instructions for children to
build their own robots using open
source hardware (Raspberry Pi).
Fig. 5. Remotely operated vehicle, ROV
Cholan
The Internet provides a powerful
medium for web- and cloud-based
learning for large numbers of students
as well as interested public. Figure 6
shows an innovative, low-cost approach
to introducing school children with
web access to robotics, by letting them
race mobile robots in real-time over the
Internet.
Fig. 8 : Robot racing in the lab
Fig. 9 shows a similar setup for
teleoperation of underwater robots
(ROV) in the laboratory tank by children
over the Internet [13]. The children can
be introduced to ROV-building with lowcost components (PVC frame, hobby
motors, switches, etc.) through handson workshops.
Fig. 10 : Schematic of outdoor mobile robot
for cleanup by children
The robots discussed so far have
educational
application,
including
with use for environmental literacy.
Meanwhile, the actuators for robots,
when used in reverse, can act as power
generators. Therefore, it is possible to
harness part of the energy involved in
children’s play as back-up power source
using electromechanical systems for
schools [15]. A variation of this theme
was developed recently for indoor
power children through pedal power
conversion, while playing video games
with virtual reality tools (Fig. 11).
Fig. 11 : Pedal power generation with
virtual reality video gaming
Fig. 6 : Mobile robot racing over the Internet
Children from a school anywhere
(India, or even abroad) can go online
and logon to the web server of the
robot racing project, and compete with
children from other schools (Figure 7).
The software used will also be made
available for college students to adopt,
customize and improve.
Fig. 9 : Teleoperation of underwater robot
As the government’s recent Swachh
Bharat highlights, clean environments
are essential to public health and a
decent standard of living. To raise
environmental literacy and awareness
among the public and children, lowcost outdoor wheeled robots are
being designed and developed for
use by school children as interactive,
entertaining high-tech mobile trash
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As the government aims to make
India a global manufacturing hub, a
major constraint to this goal is the lack
of affordable manufacturing technology
education equipment for universities,
colleges, polytechnic, industrial training
institutes, and even high schools.
It is possible to use open source
hardware and software tools for design,
development, and deployment of lowcost, desktop laboratory equipment
such as CNC mill, lathe, router, laser
cutter, 3D printer, and CIM work cell.
Figure 12 shows a very low-cost, DIY
3-axis CNC mill developed using open
source software and COTS components
such as stepper motors, drivers, and so
www.csi-india.org
COVER STORY
on [16]. Prototype CNC lathe and laser
cutter also have been developed and
tested.
Fig. 12 : Low-cost, desktop,
3-axis DIY CNC mill
Discussions
One of the major problems faced
by the author in robotics research
and education in India recently has
been the difficulty in procuring quality
components like motors, sensors,
and mechanical power transmission
parts like gears and wheels. However,
Necessity is the mother of invention, and
hence it has also been a good learning
experience for the staff and students to
improvise with available components,
to design and machine their own
mechanical parts (e.g., shaft couplers)
using manual/CNC lathe/mill, laser
cutter or 3D printer. In the case of the
robots shown in Figures 4 and 8 above,
the mechanical body of the robots is
simply a household plastic storage
container, as the students currently lack
access to a plastic injection molding
machine or the 3D printing of these
parts is more expensive.
The outreach efforts of our
robotics research and education
projects reported here have also had
the intended advantage of providing
technological immersion experience to
local school children, by exposing them
to state-of-art technology and robots,
for the first time in their experience.
Youth and children in affluent countries
have the advantage of exposure to hightech gadgets and technologies (e.g.,
personal computers, tablets and smart
phones, video game consoles, remote
controlled and robot toys), which helps
them make, innovate, and tinker in their
school and college learning.
Finally, the mentoring experience of
the school children involved has been
quite valuable for the staff and students.
University and college students are
a valuable human resource for India,
and have a social and moral obligation
to serve the society even when they
are getting educated, especially with
taxpayer funds in a resource-poor
country like India. The mentoring
of school children – in particular,
government schools – can benefit
both the mentors and mentees. It
provides civic engagement in the local
community even before they graduate,
and also facilitates effective service
learning and learning by teaching. Some
of the projects discussed here are
good examples of what is called EPICS
(Engineering Projects In Community
Service) which can be adopted
by students and faculty in higher
educational institutions on a wide scale
[17].
Conclusions
This paper has provided a brief
overview of the significant potential of
robotics technology in education and
outreach in the Indian context. Learning
outcomes can be strengthened in a
playful manner, by introducing robots
in colleges in a playful manner, while
inspiring the pursuit of innovation while
serving societal needs simultaneously.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Acknowledgments
Many of the robotic systems presented
in this paper were developed as part of the
MHRD-funded Teaching Learning Center
for Design and Manufacturing Education at
IIITDM-Kancheepuram. The contributions
of the TLC project engineers, and students
working on the projects, are acknowledged.
13.
14.
References
1.
2.
3.
. Brynjolfsson and A. McAfee, 2016, “The
E
Second Machine Age: Work, Progress,
and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant
Technologies”, W. W. Norton.
S.R. Pandian and N. Sakagami, 2008,
“System integration aspects of underwater
vehicle-manipulator systems for oceanic
exploration”, J. Soc. Instrument & Control
Engineers (Japan), 47, pp. 830-836.
C. Korpela, M. Orsag, and P. Oh, 2014,
“Towards valve turning using a dual-arm
15.
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17.
aerial manipulator”, Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf.
Intelligent Robots and Systems, Chicago, IL,
USA, pp. 3411-3416.
G. A. Bekey, 2005, “Autonomous Robots: From
Biological Inspiration to Implementation and
Control”, Bradford Books.
S. Thrun, et al., 2006, “Stanley: The Robot that
Won the DARPA Grand Challenge”, Journal of
Field Robotics, 23(9), 661–692.
National Science Foundation, “Broader impacts:
Improving society”, http://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/
special/broaderimpacts/
J. Manyika, M. Chui, J. Bughin, R. Dobbs,
P. Bisson, and A. Marrs, 2013, “Disruptive
technologies: Advances that will transform
life, business, and the global economy”,
McKinsey Global Institute, http://www.
mckinsey.com/business-functions/businesstechnology/our-insights/
disruptivetechnologies
H. Pulakkat, 2013, “India and the $20
trillion innovation opportunity in these 12
disruptive technologies”, http://articles.
economictimes.indiatimes.com/ 2013-06-25/
news/40186635_1_ technology-innovationtechnology-gap-mobile-internet
C. Pomalaza-Raez and B. H. Groff, 2003,
“Retention 101: Where Robots Go ... Students
Follow”, ASEE J. Engineering Education, 92,
pp. 1-6.
J. Pearce, 2013, “Open-Source Lab: How
to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce
Research Costs”, Elsevier.
F. Graham, 2012, “Can robotics change the
future of a nation?”, July 24, http://www.bbc.
com/news/business-18956031
S.R. Pandian, 2004, “Playful Learning:
Robotics and Mechatronics Projects for
Innovative Engineering Education”, Proc.
ASEE Gulf-Southwest Section Annual Conf.,
Lubbock, TX, USA.
S.R. Pandian, K. Hashimoto, K. Dery, and R.
Victor, 2004, “Internet-based Control of a
Prototype Underwater Robot”, Proc. Int. Conf.
Underwater Intervention, New Orleans, LA,
USA, pp. 8-13.
[14] K. Abraham and S.R. Pandian, 2013,
“A low-cost mobile urban environmental
monitoring system”, Proc. Int. Conf. Intelligent
Systems, Modeling, and Simulation, Bangkok,
Thailand, pp. 659-664.
[15] S.R. Pandian, 2004, “A human power
conversion system based on children’s play”,
Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Technology and Society,
Worcester, MA, 2004, pp. 54-61.
[16] S. Pandian and S. R. Pandian, 2014, “A
low-cost build-your-own three axis CNC mill
prototype”, Int. J. Mechanical Engineering and
Robotics, vol. 2(1), pp. 6-11.
https://engineering.purdue. edu/EPICS
About the Author:
Dr. Shunmugham R. Pandian is presently with Department
of Electronics Engineering and is Dean (Planning) at Indian
Institute of Information Technology, Design and ManufacturingKancheepuram. His areas of research include robotics,
mechatronics, and control systems, with applications in
environment, renewable energy, and education. He has more
than 120 publications in peer-reviewed journals, international
and national conferences, and one US patent. During 19922012, he did teaching and research at leading universities in
Japan and USA. He can be reached at [email protected].
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COVER STORY
Robotics in Surgery
Shruti Shashi Kumar
Ajit Joshi
Researcher, Cerelabs, Mumbai Founder, techxpla.com, Mumbai
1. Introduction to Robotics and
healthcare
Czech writer Karel Čapek was the
first to term the robots in his play R.U.R.
- ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’ (1920).
In Czech, the word Robota means
“forced labour” [1] . Since then, several
scientists sprang up to exploit this new
branch of science and technology as they
could foresee immense potential. Since
then, robots have appeared in various
forms to assist humans in their times
of distress at work, to perform complex
tasks and were also extensively used in
the areas of manufacturing, industries,
research, to aid humans. Very recently,
they are being widely used in medicine.
India’s healthcare sector is one of
the fastest growing sectors in terms of
employment generation and business
growth. In India, Hospitals account for the
largest share of healthcare expenditure
[2]. Healthcare industry comprises of
hospitals, pharmaceuticals, medical
equipment, diagnostics, and medical
insurance. Rising population, growing
incomes, change in one’s lifestyle and
more awareness of one’s health are
triggers of the growing importance of
healthcare industry.
Country with highest total spending
per person per year on health is United
States (US$ 8362). The diagnostic part
is given due importance. Advances in
imaging over the past decade have
revolutionized almost every aspect
in the medical field. Imaging can
provide accurate diagnoses. Other
than this, it can also lead to better
and more successful treatment. With
the advancements in technology, we
now have computers and robots taking
over humans to help in healthcare.
They coexist with humans in a way
that they can provide accurate results
in a laboratory, give warnings or
indications in case the parameters go
beyond the threshold when it comes
to illness, diagnose diseases and also
suggest remedies. The overall Indian
healthcare market today is worth US$
100 billion and is expected to grow
to US$ 280 billion by 2020 [3]. In this
case, it becomes imperative to utilize
the amount in development of better
technologies. Robots have been widely
used in medicine and newer ways to use
them in surgeries are being researched
upon.
For every 1000 citizens, the WHO
has recommended that there needs to
be one doctor at least. However, in India
there is a skewed ratio of 1:1700 [4]. In
the US, whenever researchers estimate
how often a medical error contributes to
a hospital patient’s death, the numbers
go up each time. In 1999, the Institute
of Medicine reported that up to 98,000
people a year die because of mistakes
in hospitals.
2. Robotics as a boon to healthcare
Robotics has literally changed the
way surgeons think! In the 19th century,
the surgeons had to travel from town to
town to perform surgeries on patients
who mourned in agony. The procedures
also used to take a long time and also
involved a lot of trauma for the patients,
as there was nothing called anaesthesia
in those times. This situation has taken
an enormous leap from nothing to
everything.
Everything is possible now. At one
point of time, humans realized that
they need a helping hand of robots,
and that’s when the intervention of
robots into the medical sector began.
It is so much simpler to even perform
surgeries on any part of the body, and
even transplantations can be easily
achieved nowadays.
3. Surgical Robots
In surgery the robots are
essentially robotic arms which carry
instruments with precision to the area
which has to be operated, provide
clear view to surgeon and ensure the
surgeons’ commands are followed
with maximum accuracy. They can also
carry out remote surgeries, where the
surgeon need not be physically present
while the patient is being operated [5].
Along with remote surgery these robots
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also facilitate invasive surgery and even
unmanned surgery and give better
control of surgical instruments and
increasing view for the surgeon.
4. History of Surgical Robots
The first robot that was used for
performing surgeries was the - PUMA
560 that was invented in 1985 [6]. The
Puma 560 was essentially a robotic
surgical arm. It was used to perform
a neurosurgical biopsy. It placed a
needle inside brain under CT guidance.
This system was used for performing
a biopsy with much greater precision.
This followed various procedures
performed by the PUMA system.
These were Cholecystectomy (1987)
i.e. surgical removal of Gall Bladder
and Transurethral resection treatment
of prostate (1988). By 1990 AESOP
developed by Computer Motion became
first system approved by US FDA for its
endoscopic surgical procedure. In 1992
Saw ROBODOC used for hip system.
In 2000 DA VINCI ROBOT broke new
ground. While it follows a trajectory, it
created a system to support surgery
with minimum insertion [7]. The Da
Vinci Robot is shown in Fig. 1. Hands are
making motions, instruments following
it. The entire surgery performed is made
be visible with the help of Camera so
that it becomes easy for the surgeons.
Figure 1: Da Vinci Robotic Surgical System
www.csi-india.org
COVER STORY
5.Components of a Robotic Surgery
system
• The vision system: It will have
an endoscope, the cameras
and other equipment to
produce a 3d image of the
operating area
• The patient side cart: It will
have robotic arms to hold
endoscope
and
surgical
equipment
• The surgeon console: As
name suggests it is used for
controlling the robotic arms
and the instruments.
6. Applications of Robotic Surgery
• Cardiac surgery
• Gastrointestinal surgery
• Gynaecology
• Neurosurgery
• Urology
• Orthopaedic procedures and
more
7.Functional features of robotics in
surgery
Following are the functional
features of robotics in surgery: [7]
1.Urology
• Utilization of robot for prostate
surgery has shown better
outcomes; both functional and
oncologic.
• It is now been extended to
surgery for renal tumors and
bladder tumors, which helps
in tissue preservation and
smaller scars.
2. Gynaecology Oncology
• Robotic arms make operative
surgery easier in the pelvis.
• Radical hysterectomy and
lymph node dissection can be
done with smaller scars and
greater precision.
3.General Surgery/ Colorectal
Surgery
• Use of robot has increased in
surgery of rectum and upper
gastrointestinal procedures
• Trans oral surgery for Head
and Neck
• Complex
oro-pharyngeal
tumours such as base of the
tongue, tonsils can be done
without splitting the cheek
• Larynx tumour approach can
be done trans orally without
laryngotomy
4. Thoracic Surgery
• Robotic esophagectomy helps
in better clearance of the
tumour and lymph nodes
• This is also being used in lung
tumours and thymus.
8. Limitations of Robotic Surgeries
The cost is high for performing
these operations. Due to cost these are
limited to certain procedures. Although
with increasing adoption costs are likely
to become lower.
9.Relationship between Robotics
and I.T
Every robot requires certain type of
programming code. A program decides
when or how a robot acts in a given
situation. A robot may be constructed
correctly from electrical and mechanical
construction. However unless the
programming is correct the robot may
perform poorly or not perform at all.
Typically these programs are remote
control and Artificial intelligence
programs. Till now most of the surgical
robots are programed for remote
control. Also the algorithm in building
robots is generic. However some of
the Artificial Intelligence techniques
have been used in making the surgery
minimally invasive, which in turn can be
used for improving the surgery. That’s
not it! There will be a time when the
surgical robots will be autonomous
with little or absolutely no human
intervention. Artificial Intelligence will
also be used in Robotics for patient care,
rehabilitation and even telemedicine.
The Vision system:
The vision system creates a
3D image. Advances in imaging,
3D visualisation have resulted in
unparalleled
operating
view
for
surgeons and better results in
About the Authors:
operations. All this has happened due
to advances in IT industry.
10. Summary and Conclusion
1. Robots help in performing
surgery with precision
2. They reduce human error
3. Surgery can be conducted by
Robots from places away from
the expert surgeon location
and has potential of creating a
new healthcare discipline like
tele surgery.
The main aim of surgeons is that
they should be able to heal the disease
of the patient and make him functional
by the end of it. This vision of the
surgeons can be easily accomplished if
they extend their hand to such friendly
robots that are used for the very benefit
of mankind.
References
[1] Robot <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Robot>, (Accessed on: May 22nd, 2016)
[2] Indian healthcare providers to spend
$1.2 billion on IT in 2016: Report <http://
www.business-standard.com/article/
economy-policy/indian-healthcareproviders-to-spend-1-2-bn-on-it-in2016-report-116062000332_1.html>,
(Accessed on: May 21st, 2016)
[3] Healthcare industry in India <http://
www.ibef.org/industry/healthcareindia.aspx>, (Accessed on: June 2nd,
2016)
[4] India has just one doctor for every 1,700
|People <http://www.newindianexpress.
com/>, (Accessed on: June 1st, 2016)
[5] Remote Surgery <https://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Remote_surgery> (Accessed
on: June 2nd, 2016)
[6] All about Robotic Surgery <http://
a l l a b o u t ro b o t i c s u rg e r y. c o m /
surgicalrobots.html>, (Accessed on:
June 10th, 2016).
[7] Medical Robotics <https://www.doc.
ic.ac.uk/~nd/surprise_96/journal/vol4/
ao2/report.html> (Accessed on: June
12th, 2016)
Ms. Shruti Shashi Kumar is Masters in CAD/CAM and
Robotics from University of Mumbai. At present she is doing
research in Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things at
Cerelabs, Mumbai.
Mr. Ajit Joshi [CSI - I1501721] is Founder of Tech blog and
webinar portal TechXpla.com Before this he has worked in IT
industry for 2 decades in various roles in IT industry mainly in
area of channels, Product Management and Presales. He has
done engineering from VJTI Mumbai. He can be reached at
[email protected].
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COVER STORY
Autonomic Unmanned Aerial Vehicles:
A Computer Vision Perspective
Siddhartha Narayana Ram Prasad Padhy, Suman Kumar Choudhury and Pankaj K. Sa
Department of CSE, NIT Rourkela
I.Introduction
Automation is the primary demand
for managing the needs of the steep
growth rate of population. It enables
an efficient way to handle large sized
data leading to efficient decision
making. This may include acquiring
data, storing them and retrieving them
whenever needed. This sudden surge
of information transfer and processing
by the beginning of the 21st century
eventually demands a faster method of
data collection and task completion. The
Robots of the present age play a very
vital role in performing these activities.
The ground stationed robots seem far
too simple a problem when we try to
explore the implementation of airborne
and underwater robots to accomplish
the before-mentioned tasks. Now,
one logical question to ask is for data
collection and task management from
the above, hot air balloons, satellites,
and airplanes are already in place. Also
the need for underwater and ground
stationed robots can be questioned
provided there are submarines and
vehicles which perform the task
optimally. The answer to that can be
broken down into two steps: Firstly,
technology is changing every day and
somebody is implementing some
advanced and sustained algorithms
that prove to be better than the earlier
ones. The ultimate goal being able to
use limited amount of resources at
our discretion to achieve the maximum
output possible. Secondly, in the past
decade, it was tough for a farmer to
keep an eye on his large cattle livestock
grazing on the field, but now robotics
technology has made his life a bit easier
by automating his many daily activities
which in then time, were manual
labor. In general, robots help increase
productivity and also provide an edge
to the user with the power of decision
making along with enough information
Fig. 1 : DJI Phantom 4 drone during flight
at his disposition.
When we talk about data acquiring,
the small commercial Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or Quad-rotors
(Quadcopters) have unmatched quality
and precision. These are hardwired
robotic structures with constraints being
the weight of the airborne system and
latency of data transfer. The term UAV
as the name suggest is a device capable
of making itself airborne. The difference
between this and any other airborne
devices is that, it can be controlled from
a base station or on-board processors
taking data as input from the sensors
fitted on it. Quad-rotors similarly have
the same concept with the only variation
that they have four rotors to provide
the thrust for take-off, maneuvering
and landing. When we say sensors, we
also include cameras which are light
weight of-course, that provide visual
information in real time. It is analogous
to our human eye. Some drones have
the facility of stereo cameras and the
video feed provided from them give
a real 3D experience, while some
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drones focus on environment sensing
with a single on-board camera. Other
sensors include Ultrasound Sensors for
height measurement, GPS for location
estimation,
Inertial
Measurement
Unit (IMU) and many more. It might
seem that the more sensors we add,
the more information we collect, but
such is not the case. Redundancy up
to a certain level is acceptable. Beyond
that, it violates the weight constraint of
the airborne system. The battery itself
has its own weight which one has to
consider. The duration of the flight is
dependent on the quality of the battery
and the quality is dependent upon the
weight of the substance (Li-Po in most
cases) used.
Before we indulge in the details of
the drones and the available drones in
the market, let us see the specific fields
where drones have been used and have
put an impact on the ways tasks are
accomplished. The first impact of drones
and UAVs which has seen widespread
success is the use in Air Defense and
Reconcile Missions to counter enemy
www.csi-india.org
COVER STORY
Fig. 2 : Our custom-made Quadcopter
targets by the Military of several leading
nations in defense sector. They took
over the job of traditional fighter jets
and bombers. This made pilots free
from danger as they will now be at
base station far from actual war-zone
monitoring the information and sending
commands to the drone. Apart from
war time needs, drones are also being
used by law enforcement units of some
countries like France, USA, Germany
and U.K among others. The main job
of such drones are tracking a certain
target on the streets and providing a
very different angle and perspective of
solution finding to problems like traffic,
burglar or hit and run cases to maintain
law and order. Apart from enforcing
law and order, drones are being widely
used for recreational purposes like
aerial photography and film making,
freelancing and adventure sports.
Agriculture and forest departments
also have a very high probability of
benefiting from the advantages provided
by the drone and sensors mounted on
it. Weather Forecast can also be done
using drones and are in active usage by
Meteorological departments across the
globe.
This article briefly outlines the
popular UAVs available in the market
and the specific works they can
perform. We subtly describe the usage
methods and how they have been useful
in the past. We also provide certain
hints as to how a drone can be custom
made. Further, we elaborate Computer
Vision related applications using drone
technology which can provide mid-flight
solutions autonomously. Finally, we
conclude by a simple question for as to
use it as a weapon of mass destruction
or as a source of life, knowledge and
productivity.
II. Popular UAVs and their Tasks
UAVs are highly operation specific
and depending on the needs one has
to be careful to buy a product tailored
for their needs. There are quite a few
companies that have quad-rotors/
drones/UAVs as their trademark product.
Some among them are DJI, Parrot,
Lilu, UDI and Blade. On the defense
and ammunition sectors, Lockheed
Martin, Boeing and Denel Dynamics
(South Africa) are most notable. New
Drones are also being developed by
flagship companies like Google and
Facebook where their primary aim is
to increase Internet connectivity across
the globe by harnessing the solar
power and reaching those corners of
the earth where establishing satellites
communication methods is not feasible.
Here, we emphasize on the small
scale commercial drones available in
market for the public and what most
can be achieved out of these drones/
UAVs. First we shall take a look at the
leading quad-rotor making company,
DJI from Dajiang Innovation, a China
based company. They provide very
stable drones and can have a payload
of about 100gms to 500gms. They have
an excellent camera on-board which
can capture 4K quality video and can
be used for video processing with
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extreme precision. It has binocular
CMOS cameras of very low resolutions
as well but they are used specifically for
obstacle distance measurement alone.
The go-pro camera is fit on a gimbal
which can rotate on both horizontal
and vertical axes which enables a view
from all directions. With little training,
one can master the art of taking
super awesome videos. This drone is
primarily being used for movie making
where an overhead frame is required
and conventional cameras could not
achieve those shots. Apart from that
some intelligence agencies and traffic
control police also use it to get an idea
from areal imagery and hence take
fast decisions. For development and
research purposes as well this drone
can be used. Its SDK and developer
tools are available on-line and source
code on GIT-Hub. Secondly, the Parrot
Drone Company is a tough competitor
for DJI drones. Parrot Drones are
more light weight as compared to DJI
counterpart and has protective shields
across the blades of the rotors called
Protective Hull. Its integration with ROS
(Robot Operating System) makes it a
viable option for research. Applications
include Image Processing, Computer
Vision and IoT (Internet of Things).
Here however the latency of video data
transfer is high and better model Bepop
Drone provides better stability and
image processing and tracking features.
Also if you love adventure and want
to show your talent, then photos and
videos are the basic way to do so. But
most part of the adventure videos that
you have accomplished could not be
taped. The present day drones can solve
those problems. A new drone in the
market which goes by the name “Lily
Camera” absolutely suits the purpose.
There is a tracker which one has to
keep with him and the drone will follow
you taking the best shots possible. And
moreover the drone is waterproof and
even if it falls in the water mid-flight,
nothing to worry about. The drop-throw
and fly feature is one of the best. All one
has to do is throw the drone and it will
automatically follow the one who has
the tracker. Similarly, if drone racing
is the key need then QAV250 from
Lumenier is the choice. The QAV250
is highly customizable and various on
COVER STORY
board processors can be fit depending
on the needs of the user. It comes with a
basic frame and certain modules which
are mandatory. Additional modules
can be added and coded accordingly to
obtain the best results. Blade drones
provide drones majorly for the joy of
riding purposes. They can be treated
as toys and can be termed as training
drones. They also provide some high
end drones which have higher payloads
and can be used to transport items in
the time of need.
As we have shifted towards the
goods transport part, it is no surprise
drones could be used to deliver goods
or orders from restaurants, local
shopkeepers, parcels from window
shopping delivery and many more.
Amazon is trying a new aspect of drone
technology which has a higher lifting
capacity to deliver its packages in a fast
and efficient manner. It has named its
project as Amazon Prime Air. A demo
of such activity has already been shown
by the company. While in these matters,
the Domino’s Pizza has also not been
far behind this technical advancement.
They have made their own drone named
DomiCopter used for ultra-fast delivery
of pizza in the city. Traffic will no more
be an excuse for your pizza being
delivered late. However these drones
are still under research and there is
time for a fully finished product to come
to the market.
Another top class drone technology
is being provided by the senseFly
group. It is a subsidiary group of Parrot
Drones. Here they focus more on
Fig. 4 : NIT Rourkela front building view, taken by
DJI Phantom 4 go-pro camera using its gimbal
application specific drone production.
For surveillance usage, Albris drone
variant can be used. It has advanced
thermal sensing. This feature can be
used in cattle herding to locate a lost
calf or lamb in the woods by sensing the
infrared signatures of the animal. Also
mapping of the environment to provide
information to ground robots can be
done using a specific eBee drone also
from senseFly. This mapping feature
can be used in mining and sowing
seeds and irrigation purposes. The
drone can hover over the crop fields and
provide information to the farmer for as
if any immediate action is to be taken
or immediate irrigation is needed. For
mining point of view, real time scanning
of path in case of any natural calamity
in the mine can give a first-hand
apprehension of the situation leading
Fig. 3 : NIT Rourkela Campus view, taken by DJI Phantom 4 during twilight
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to efficient planning to evade many
unpleasant situations which in earlier
days claimed a lot of lives.
As we see the usages of drones as
per demand, we can take a step further
and make it useful for post disaster
information collection and evaluation.
During calamities like earthquake and
tsunami or landslides where certain
building unstable and rescue operations
become risky themselves, a drone could
be send to access and information
can be gained from these images and
proper action plan can be taken by the
rescue operation chiefs. The structural
analysis and disaster assessment and
response planning are the ley features
that the drone technology can achieve.
Also viewing the disaster struck region
from a bird-eye view will provide better
locations for rescue base formation
and setting up grievance centers and
casualty servicing locations for fast
recovery of the situation. It is said that
during Nepal crisis of earthquake
earlier this year, Zurich, a tech solution
firm from USA had proposed to deploy a
drone for situation analysis and advice
on future steps for the Rescue team.
Other general purposes usage
include better video capture in Sports
where the ball could be made to track
and a new experience could be given to
the consumers at home who watch on
TV. Many commercial news and sports
channel have already deployed this tech
under their caps. Even well to do real
estate companies are using drones to
provide a better and clarified decision
www.csi-india.org
COVER STORY
Table: Comparison of various UAVs available in market
Features
Flight Duration
(in min)
4K video, 12MP photos, DJI GO app, GPS positioning, Obstacle avoidance system, and
Visual object tracking technology, maximum altitude 500 m
20 – 28
Parrot AR Drone 720p front and VGA bottom camera, protective hull, GPS, AR. Free Flight app, 92 degree
wide angle lens, maximum altitude 100 m
15 – 20
Parrot Bepop
14MP, 1080p camera, Operating range: 2000 m, maximum altitude 100 m
20 – 25
Lily Camera
12MP, 1080p camera, max. Speed 40 km/hr, maximum altitude 15 m, Operating range:
30 m, water proof, GPS, object tracking
18 – 25
eBee senseFly
18.2MP with HD video recording, Thermal image sensor, Operating range: 3000 m, GPS,
cruise speed: 40-90 km/hr, automatic 3D flight planning, eMotion2 flight planning app
50 – 60
Available UAVs
DJI Phantom 4
Fig. 5 : DJI Phantom 4 and Parrot AR Drone
Quadcopters flying side by side
making options for their customers
while buying a new house or property.
The drone can be used to show the
attractive aspects of the locality and
the surroundings of the property and
neighborhood. In a way Drones are a
small investments in technology which
has a promising return policy.
III. How Computer Vision can help?
Until now we showed the various
fields where can use the drones.
However, all these advancement is not
just the contribution of hardware of the
flying machine alone. In the back-end
some smart algorithms are playing to
provide desired outputs. The drone’s
primary sensor, the camera and the
information by this sensor is what
we are interested in. The video feed
obtained from drone must go through
certain algorithms and in the output we
shall get information which will enable
us to take the necessary decisions.
This may include sending appropriate
control signals for the drone to carry
out or advise some department on the
possible solutions at hand at that time
and longtime advises if needed.
It is quite clear that image
processing techniques have to be
applied on the input video frames. This
leads us to the idea that it is a problem
of computer vision and shall be dealt as
such. Computer vision is an approach
to understand videos and images by
taking into account the understanding
of human nature, leading to improved
mathematical models and optimized
decisions as output. Basically bridging
the gap between human visualization
and a computer’s visualization and
understanding of the physical world
is what Computer Vision is all about.
There are many computer vision related
tasks that can be accomplished using a
drone. Some of them are:
Visual 3-D reconstruction of the
surrounding environment
Autonomous navigation of the
drones in unknown environments
by avoiding obstacles solely using
its camera module
Precision
agriculture,
Bridge
inspection, Roof inspection, Search
and rescue operation, Object
Tracking, Hazardous site detecting
in Mining fields, Inspection of
the disaster hit areas (like flood,
earthquake,
tsunami)
where
humans cannot enter easily, Forest
fire monitoring, Animal activity
recognition, Surveillance of public
events, monitoring large gathering,
Coastal
surveillance,
Traffic
surveillance, Boarder surveillance
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etc.
For research purpose Parrots’
AR Drone is most suitable. Also DJI’s
Phantom 4 may also come under the
cap. When we say research, we do
not mean how to fly well, rather we
emphasize on how to achieve the tasks
mentioned earlier in a more efficient
and fast manner. Research can be
made on the fault analysis of unstable
buildings and devising algorithms which
are more robust such that actions can
be taken when the drone is airborne. A
new research field has emerged where
researchers are trying to find a solution
to navigate a drone in a GPS denied
environment. It is a very challenging
task and one has to rely solely on the
information received from the camera
to take decisions. This decision making
process is also being automated using
advanced Artificial Intelligence Approach,
Deep Learning and Data Mining. The key
lies in energy management, increasing
flight duration and decreasing latency
of data transfer in real time.
For communicating with the drone,
Robot Operating System (ROS) is used.
This like any other Operating System,
provides a hardware level abstraction
and allows us to focus on the task
at hand rather than the architecture
of the drone. So instead of going to
hardware level commands for the drone
to operate, the ROS helps build some
processes called Nodes and information
is passed between nodes via topics
contained in a message packets. This
leaves us to focus on the task to be
accomplished rather than digging
deeper into the operations of the drone.
ROS can be coded using any languages
COVER STORY
guides and huge amount of help can
be found at YouTube when one runs
into some kind of trouble regarding the
assembling. It is basically like pulling
together Lego set and then coding
it! This custom made drone also has
ROS integration features. Depending
on the need and taste, either ROS can
be used to communicate to the Drone
or one can use the traditional UART
mode of Communication using Radio
Frequencies or Wi-Fi signals.
like C++, Python or Java and is easy to
use once the dynamics and structure
of building the Nodes is known. Once
ROS connection is established, all kind
of image processing, computer vision
algorithms and Artificial Intelligence
algorithms can be applied to the
input information to make the system
robust and functioning. If need be and
some customization are necessary for
research purposes, one can build their
own driver for ROS for the drone. However
there are some readily available Drone
Specific Drivers in the open Source
Community (ardrone_autonomy - @GITHub) and it works fine. Drones from
Parrot have ROS integration Option.
Platform for Simulation is available and
is provide by Gazebo. Like ROS, Gazebo
is an open source product developed by
the Open Source Robotics Foundation.
They support a wide range of other
robots as well which include ABB arms,
Pepper from Softbank and many more.
DJI Drones have their own SDKs and
Drivers which can be bought from the
Internet by paying some nominal fees.
There are student editions available as
well in low cost.
If ready-made Drones are not
suiting, no worries, one can build one
themselves. It is not a very difficult
task. The entire Drone architecture is
divided into electronic modules and
each module is available in the market
to assemble, code and fly. Online sites
like Robomart, provide drone building
IV.Conclusion
It does seem like the very job of
small scale commercial drones is to
collect photographs and videos alone.
And one will not be wrong to say that. But
the angle in which these photographs
and videos were taken may provide
a different angle of solution finding.
There is a huge difference in analyzing
a problem by staying within one and
by hovering above it getting a bird’s
eye view. When solutions from these
two angles are merged, the margin of
decision error reduces manifold. It is
no surprise that in wars, where minute
mistakes in decision making can claim
hundreds of lives, Both aerial and
ground station information are put forth
for a collective action. This is a booming
research field where all countries are
trying their hands on UAVs and Drones,
each trying to develop one faster and
intelligent one than the other. They
can be a weapon of mass destruction,
or a tool for efficient management and
source for life support. You Choose.
References
[1] Parrot AR Drone 2.0 Quadcopter,
http://parrot.com/pl/produkty/
ardrone-2
[2] Library for autonomous navigation
of Parrot AR Drone Quadcopter
through programming, https://
github.com/AutonomyLab/
ardrone_autonomy
[3] Documentation for Parrot AR
Drone Quadcopter ROS library
ardrone_autonomy, http://ardroneautonomy.readthedocs.io/en/latest
[4] Parrot’s
advanced
Bepop
Quadcopter, http://parrot.com/pl/
produkty/bebop-drone
[5] Parrot’s high speed senseFly
Drones,
https://sensefly.com/
home.html
[6] DJI Phantom 4 Quadcopter, http://
dji.com/product/phantom-4
[7] Water proof “Lily Camera” Drones,
https://lily.camera
[8] Robot Operating System for
controlling any robot through
programming, http://ros.org
[9] UAV applications using Computer
vision,
http://asctec.de/en/uavuas-drone-applications/computervision
[10] Comparison of best drones
available in Market, http://drones.
specout.com
n
About the Authors:
Mr. Siddhartha Narayana, is
pursuing his Dual degree (B.Tech and
M.Tech) in the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering, National
Institute of Technology, Rourkela. His
research interest includes Robotics and
Computer Vision.
Mr. Suman Kumar Choudhury, is
currently pursuing his PhD degree in
the Department of Computer Science
and Engineering, National Institute of
Technology, Rourkela. His research
interest includes Computer Vision, Video
Surveillance, Image Processing, and
Pattern Recognition.
Mr. Ram Prasad Padhy, is
currently pursuing his PhD degree in
and Engineering, National Institute of
Technology, Rourkela with 3.5 years
of industrial experience. His research
interest includes Robotics and Computer
Vision, Machine learning, and Pattern
Recognition.
Mr. Pankaj Kumar Sa [CSI–I0148652]
is working as an Assistant Professor in
and Engineering, National Institute
of Technology, Rourkela with 10 years
of teaching and research experience.
His research interest includes Image
Processing, Computer Vision and
Computer Graphics. He can be reached
at [email protected].
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www.csi-india.org
TECHNICAL TRENDS
Current Trends in Development of Intelligent
Robotic Systems for Manufacturing
Sankha Deb
FMS and Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur
Manufacturers are increasingly
faced with challenges in the market
place of having to deal with low
production
volumes
and
high
product mix, thus rendering the
installation, support and modification
of dedicated or fixed automation
systems prohibitively expensive and
impractical. The demands for flexibility
and adaptability are increasingly high
priorities for manufacturers. Sensor
guided intelligent robotic systems are
fast emerging as powerful tools to meet
these demands as they can be quickly
adapted from one product to the next,
facilitating new product introductions
in shorter lead times. Advances in
sensing technology as they are getting
better, smaller and more affordable,
coupled with faster computing power
for processing the sensor data due
to availability of high performance
processors and development of clever
and more versatile end-of-arm tooling
are raising the robot’s IQs to new levels.
The application potential of sensor
guided intelligent robotic systems range
across a wide spectrum of applications
in manufacturing industries from
automobile to consumer and industrial
electronic assemblies. This article
presents some of the current trends
in development of intelligent robotic
systems for manufacturing.
In intelligent robotic systems,
sensors provide information necessary
to perceive changes in environments
and help to adapt accordingly by
modifying the robot actions. One of the
rapidly growing sensing technologies
in industrial robotics is the machine
vision. Lowering of costs and higher
computing power are thought to be
primary drivers in the recent upsurge
in increasing adoption of machine
vision technologies. Machine vision can
be used for recognition of objects in a
scene and estimation of their position
and orientation before performing
manipulation by the robot. During part
insertion operations in mechanical
assembly, the necessary guidance
and control of the robotic system for
adjustment and maintaining alignment
between parts can be performed using
machine vision. After completion of
assembly operations, machine vision is
useful for inspection and quality control
of the assembled product.
For many years, researchers
have been actively investigating the
use of machine vision in the control
of robotic systems that resulted in
different control strategies. In one of the
strategies known as “look and move”,
the robot first sees and recognizes the
environment helped by a machine vision
system and after that it performs the
motion based on the data acquired in the
previous step. The vision system works
in this approach as an open loop system
as considering a task in which the robot
must reach the position of an object in
the workspace, the system does not
check whether the object is reached;
the accuracy of the operation depends
on the accuracy of the hardware such
as the camera, the manipulator and
the controller. An alternative to open
loop control is visual servoing, which
uses visual information in the control
loop feedback thus increasing the
overall accuracy of the system. The
visual servoing system uses the visual
information acquired from a scene by
one or more cameras connected to the
vision system to control the robot endeffector pose with respect to a specific
object in the scene. This closed loop
control permits to correct possible
errors in the object position estimation
obtained from the vision system
and makes the system insensitive
to calibration errors and relaxes the
mechanical accuracy and rigidity
requirements for the robot manipulator
mechanism.
Visual
servoing
approaches can further broaden the
spectrum of application of robot control
to unstructured environments as they
do not need a-priori knowledge of the
workspace.
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It is possible to use different
visual servoing strategies by placing
the cameras following two typical
configurations. “Fixed-eye strategy”
also known as “eye-to-hand” is a
popular control strategy in which a
camera is mounted at a fixed position to
obtain an overview of the scene. In this
case, the camera has no mechanical
connection with the robot which is being
visually controlled, but the relation
between the camera and the robot base
frame is known. Another alternative
visual servoing strategy is to use a
moving camera, also known as “eye-inhand”, where a camera is mounted on
the robot wrist giving a more precise
vision of the local environment of the
task.
Sometimes number of cameras
may be greater than one to obtain a more
confident geometric reconstruction
of the environment. Stereoscopic
imaging can be sometimes useful to
obtain 3D information from the scene.
A stereoscopic vision system works by
interpretation of two views of the scene
taken from known different viewpoints
with the help of two cameras in order
to resolve the depth ambiguity. The
location of feature points such as region
centroid or a corner feature in one view
is matched with the location of the
same feature points in the other view.
However, matching or correspondence
problems may be subject to error.
Another difficulty arises where a feature
point is visible in only one of the views
and therefore, its depth cannot be
determined.
Another method of classifying
visual servoing approaches is based
on position based visual servoing and
image based visual servoing. In position
based visual servoing, the relative pose
of the object to be reached with respect
to the camera frame is estimated.
The estimated pose of the object is
compared with the desired one and the
difference between both localizations is
the controlling input. On the other hand,
TECHNICAL TRENDS
in image based visual servoing systems,
the control is directly carried out in the
image space. Thereby, the controller
input is a comparison between the
observed image features and the
desired ones.
At IIT Kharagpur, researchers in
the FMS and Computer Integrated
Manufacturing Laboratory are working
on developing machine vision based
systems for robot guidance applications
in manufacturing. Hoping to bypass the
need for tedious and time consuming
lead-through robot programming, we
are using visual servoing to control the
motion of a Yaskawa Motoman industrial
robot manipulator by visual feedback
signals from a machine vision system
obtained using cameras arranged
in different configurations such as
single camera, multiple cameras in
stereoscopic arrangement, etc. Without
requiring robot programming for
teaching the trajectory by moving the
manipulator with a teach pendent, the
robot can be controlled to move inside
its work environment to accomplish
various manufacturing tasks such
as pick and place from a conveyor,
palletizing/depalletizing,
loading/
unloading machines and even do
precise component insertion tasks
in mechanical assembly. Research is
under way on sensor fusion by combining
sensory data from multiple sensors in
enhancing the autonomous guidance
capability of industrial robots. We plan
to use machine vision in conjunction
with other sensors like laser range
finders for Simultaneous Localization
and Mapping (SLAM) applications in
industrial robots. It is aimed at building
a map of the work environment of the
robot, while at the same time navigating
the environment using the map. SLAM
applications had been so far limited to
autonomous mobile robot navigation
and autonomous aerial navigation.
Touch sensing with force/torque
feedback is another rapidly growing
sensing technology in industrial
robotics. It can provide the industrial
robots with the ability to manipulate
objects for precision manufacturing
applications such as parts fitting
and part insertions in mechanical
assemblies. These sensors can be
classified based on the number of
force components that the sensor is
able to measure. The choice can range
from one-component sensors known
as load cells to Force/Toque sensors
able to separately measure upto six
components of force and torque. An
important aspect in selection of this
sensor is the application and installation
site on the manipulator. For example, in
case of control of grasping force applied
by the gripper, simple load cells can be
installed on each finger. In insertion
operations, a very common application
consists of a Force/Torque sensor
mounted between the robot wrist and
the end-effector or gripper which can be
used to actively compensate insertion
misalignments.
Multi-sensor
guidance
with
machine vision used in conjunction with
force feedback can offer the potential
to provide industrial robots with the
capability to execute complex assembly
tasks autonomously with pretty much
the same level of dexterity exhibited
by skilled human workers , who reply
on complex coordination between the
eyes and the hand during execution
of such tasks. Some laboratory scale
applications have been reported by
researchers on robotic assembly
programming using force/torque maps
obtained from force/torque sensors
in conjunction with machine vision. In
some cases, with the aid of such multisensor guidance, robots can be made
to perform complex manufacturing
tasks beyond the capability of even the
most skilled human worker as required
in some high precision assembly
operations, where small parts have to be
manipulated and assembled together
within very tight micron level tolerances.
One of the essential capabilities
needed to address the challenges
that the manufacturers are facing in
production of parts in low volumes
and high product mix is believed to be
robots that are equipped with more
general purpose and versatile endof-arm tooling or grippers that are
able to quickly and adeptly grasp and
manipulate a broad range of part shapes.
Such grippers need to incorporate force
and tactile sensing capabilities to make
grasping adjustments on the fly and to
mimic some of the human dexterity in
grasping. The past few decades saw
the development of different gripper
designs in the research laboratories.
The robot grippers range in number
of fingers from two to three or more
fingers and employ a variety of
different actuation mechanisms from
20 u
u
link actuated mechanisms to tendon
driven mechanisms. At IIT Kharagpur,
researchers are working on designing
and developing multi-finger dexterous
robot grippers based on link as well as
tendon driven actuated mechanisms
for application in industrial robots.
Research is also ongoing to incorporate
tactile and force sensing capabilities in
the hand and develop intelligent force
control strategies for manipulation of
objects of different shapes. Research
is also underway in our laboratory to
develop strategies for multi-finger
grasp level planning for objects of
different shapes.
Over the decades, different
prototypes of sensor based intelligent
robotic systems have been developed in
laboratory scale in different universities
around the world. However, there are
still numerous challenges that need
to be overcome to reach a level of
maturity where we can transition these
prototypes out of the laboratory and into
commercial applications in industry.
In many cases, the sensors being
laboratory based solutions are difficult
to integrate directly or are expensive
to be cost-effective. Even though
individual sensors can be used to
measure process quantities and supply
signals for process monitoring, in order
to develop multi-sensor systems to
allow several quantities of data to be
acquired, there is need to develop robust
sensor fusion technologies that would
allow intelligent signal processing of
the multiple measurement quantities of
such multi-sensor systems.
Bibliography
1. Agrawal, S. (2016), Vision based
automated robotic assembly, M.
Tech Thesis, IIT Kharagpur.
2. Chen, H., Zhang, B. and Zhang,
G. (2015), Robotic Assembly,
Handbook
of
Manufacturing
Engineering
and
Technology,
Springer-Verlag London.
3. Das, A. and Deb, Sankha (2010),
Grasping strategies for a dexterous
multi-finger
robot
gripper,
Proceedings of 3rd International
and 24th AIMTDR Conference,
Vishakapatnam, India.
4. Deb, S. R. and Deb, Sankha (2009),
Robotics Technology and Flexible
Automation, Tata McGraw Hill, New
Delhi, 2nd Edition.
5. Jain, A. (2016), Design and
development of a multi-finger
www.csi-india.org
TECHNICAL TRENDS
robot gripper for material handling
applications, M. Tech. Thesis, IIT
Kharagpur.
6. Nof, S. Y. (1999), Handbook of
Industrial Robotics, John Wiley &
Sons Inc., 2nd Edition.
7. Pal, S., Chattopadhyay, S. and
Deb, S. R. (2008), Design and
development of a multi-degrees of
freedom dexterous instrumented
robot
gripper,
Sensors
&
Transducers Journal, Vol. 87/1, pp.
63-73.
8. Sainul, I. A., Deb, Sankha and Deb,
A. K. (2016), A three finger tendon
driven robotic hand design and its
kinematic model, in CAD, CAM,
Robotics and Factories of the
Future, Springer Lecture Notes in
Mechanical Engineering, eds. D. K.
Mandal and C. S. Syan, pp. 313-321.
9. Santochi, M. and Dini, G. (1998),
Sensor Technology in Assembly
Systems, Annals of CIRP, Vol. 47/2,
pp. 503-524.
10. Siciliano, B. and Khatib, O. (2008),
Springer Handbook of Robotics,
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
11. Thomas, U., Molkenstruck, S.,
Iser, R. and Wahl, F. M. (2007),
Multi Sensor Fusion in Robot
Assembly Using Particle Filters,
IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation, Roma,
Italy.
About the Authors:
Dr. Sankha Deb is a faculty member of Mechanical Engineering Department of IIT Kharagpur. He
obtained his PhD in Industrial Engineering in 2005 from Ecole Polytechnique Montreal, Canada, after doing
M.Tech in Manufacturing Process Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from
NIT Durgapur. He had earlier served as a faculty member in IIT Guwahati and ISI Kolkata. He was also
invited as a visiting faculty member in Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering at University
of Montreal, Canada in 2008 and 2009. He had also served in Voltas Ltd. for one year. His research interests
include Computer Integrated Manufacturing, FMS, Automation and Robotics, and Micro-manufacturing.
He coauthored a book on Robotics Technology and Flexible Automation. He can be reached at sankha.deb@
mech.iitkgp.ernet.in.
Call for Papers
CCIS 2016
(IEEE Conference Record : 39590)
2nd International Conference on Communication Control and Intelligent Systems
(Fri-Sun) November 18-20, 2016 | www.gla.ac.in/ccis2016
Organized by: Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering
Introduction:
Technically co-sponsored by IEEE U.P., Section and in association with CSI
Mathura Chapter, the second international conference and 11th conference
in sequence, Communication Control and Intelligent Systems (CCIS 2016)
will be held on November 18th -20th , 2016. CCIS 2016 is an international
conference where theory, practice and applications of communication systems,
control systems, intelligent systems and allied areas are to be presented and
discussed.
Conference Theme:
Technical paper Submissions are invited under the following topics, but are
not limited to:Track-1: Wireless and Wired Networks, Multimedia Communications,
computer Networks, Optical networks, Networking& Applications, Next
Generation Services
Track-2 : Control Systems, Nonlinear Signals and Systems, Embedded
systems and software, intelligent systems, neural networks and fuzzy Logic,
Robotics and applications, Machine learning and soft computing, System
identification and control, Algorithms and Computing.
Track-3 : VLSI Technology, Design & Testing , Signal processing, ,Bio-Medical
Processing, Speech image and video processing, Analog and Mixed Signal
Processing, Hardware Implementation for Signal Processing, Text processing,
Database and data mining
Track-4 : Monolithic and hybrid integrated (active and passive) components and
circuits, Antennas and phased arrays, RF packaging and package modeling,
RF MEMS and Microsystems, EMI/EMC
Track-5: Adhoc Networks, ubiquitous and Cloud computing, Distributed and
parallel systems, Security and information systems, Network security
Submission
Prospective authors are encouraged to submit their paper through easy chair.
The link is available on the conference website. Submissions must be plagiarism
free and not more than five pages in IEEE format.Use the following link to
submit your papers. https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ccis20160
Proceedings Publication
All Accepted and presented papers of the conference by duly registered
author(s), will be submitted to IEEE Xplore digital library for possible
publication. (IEEE Conference Rocord: 39590). Proceedings of 1st international
conference CCIS-2015 available at IEEE xplore on the link: ieeexplore.ieee.org/
xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=7433555
Important Dates/Deadlines
July 16, 2016
Submission of regular paper
August 25, 2016
Paper acceptance notification to authors
September 25, 2016
Last Date of registration
October 03, 2016
Last Date of Camera Ready Copy Submission
October 03, 2016
Last Date of Copyright form Submission
Registration Details
All delegates are required to register for the conference as per the following
details:
Corporate Executive and Professional
` 12,000 /-
Academicians IEEE/ICEIT/CSI/IETE Members
` 8,000 /-
Academicians Non Member
` 10,000 /-
Students IEEE/ICEIT/CSI/IETE Members
` 5,000 /-
Student Non Members
` 6,500/-
Academicians from abroad
US$300
For any inquiry please Contact :[email protected]
Mr. Abhay Chaturvedi (Technical Program Committee Chair): +91-9997728756, Mr. Aasheesh Shukla (Technical Program CommitteeChair): +91-8126130707
Mr. Manish Kumar (Publicity Committee Chair): +91-9719232004,
Mr. Suneel Kumar, (Publicity Committee Member): +91-7500391880
GLA University, Mathura, 17 km stone, NH-2, Mathura Delhi Road, P.O. Chaumuha, Mathura-281406, UP. India
Tel: (05662) 250909, 250900, 9927064017,Fax: (05662)241687, Website: www.gla.ac.in
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RESEARCH FRONT
Internet Of Robotics Things (IORT) –
Embedded IOT Enabled Robotics Technology
S. S. Aravinth, P. Sachidhanandam, R. Karthick and M. Senthilkumar
Knowledge Institute of Technology, Salem
IOT and robotics are the captivating technologies which are giving more commercial applications today. IOT
gives the connectivity from the physical environment to embedded objects. The incorporation and interplay
between IOT and Robotics are expected to yield the network connectivity. Machine to Machine (M2M)
connectivity needs the networking intelligence to act as an autonomous. This confluence gives the “Assisting
for Human Beings Environment (AHBE)”. The robotics platform fire bird V ATMEGA 2560 is getting acquainted
with embedded sensor robotics environment. In this work, the valet parking system is implemented on fire
bird v robot. This is a phased approach. Here we have presented the fire bird v platform overview, sensors
utilization and implementation. This idea was implemented during the competition of IIT e yantra Teachers
Competition 2014. A team of five faculties from various departments have been participating and implementing
this activity based project learning. Initially all the assignments were submitted through online such as theme
analysis, study of hardware and software, implementation analysis and document submission.
The combination of IOT and Robotics will give enormous applications in future technological trends. The
applications of robotics technology are widely scattered. To promote the research activity in embedded sensor
IOT with robotics technology is the aim and focus of this paper. The applications of this new approach provide
the deployment of sensor devices and its platform on robotics intelligence. Hence, in future this approach will
get more attention to the researchers.
I.
Platform Analysis
ultrasonic range sensors.
Sensors on Firebird V
5. 2 Position Encoders: –
It is used to control the position and
velocity of the robot by giving feedback
to the microcontroller. Optical encoder
MOC 7811 is used as position encoder.
Its resolution is 5.44 mm. It can be
extendable to 4 sensors. Voltage and
Current sensing sensors can also be
used.
1. 8 IR Proximity Sensors :–
These sensors are generally used
for detecting the objects of any types in
the short range i.e. within 10cm distance
from the robot. If the obstacle is closer
to the sensor then light gets reflected
much and falls on the photodiode and
the leakage current will flow through
the diode, hence, the sensor will
detect the object easily. It will consume
51mA current from the battery for the
operation. We can also use IR sensor as
directional light intensity sensor if we
turn-off IR LED.
2. 5 Sharp IR Range Sensors : –
These sensors are used to detect
the obstacles from the distance in the
range of 10cm – 80cm. This will not
work well if the obstacle is closer i.e.
less than 10cm from the robot. This
works on the principle of “Angle of
Reflection” and not on “Light Intensity”.
Analog output voltage is produced
corresponding to the angle of reflection
Fig 1. Sharp Sensor on FIREBIRD V
3. 3.3 White Line Sensors : –
Firebird V robot has 3 white line
sensors arranged as Left, Center and
Right for detecting and differentiating
the white and black line surfaces. This
sensor has red LED as transmitter and
photodiode as receiver. This red LED’s
are controlled by PG5 pin (in Port G) of
ATMEGA2560 microcontroller. It can be
extended up to 7 sensors.
4. Ultrasonic Range Sensors : –
This sensor can be used to sense
the object from 6 inches to 254 inches.
The robot can be equipped with 5
22 u
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6. DC motor
It is used to make the robot for the
locomotion control including direction
and velocity. For the given theme, DC
motors can be used to move the robot
in forward direction, backward direction
and rotation by 90 degree or 180 degree
either clockwise or anti-clockwise.
7. Buzzer It is used to give the beep sound
for each occupied status irrespective of
their slot and at the end of the task.
8. LCD Display –
It is used to show the available slot
numbers in resident and visitor slots of
the arena. It can also be used to display
www.csi-india.org
RESEARCH FRONT
the values read on sensors when they
operate
II. Software Used
1.
ATMEL AVR Studio is used for
programming the Firebird V robot.
In addition, WIN AVR compiler
and Boot loader software for
completing the task is used.
2.
First, we need to install WINAVR
compiler in anyone of the drive in
PC.
3.
Install AVR Studio in the same
drive as per the steps given in the
manual. This AVR Studio is an IDE
for writing and debugging AVR
Applications.
4.
After installing, the AVR Studio,
window will be opened when
the icon is clicked. It has coding
window where the program can
be written and it has to be saved
with the extension .C. Then, it
will be compiled by clicking Build
Rebuild All. The Build window
shows compilation result such
as errors, warning message etc.
If error comes, then make the
correction on the program. During
Compilation, .hexfile is created in
the default folder.
5.Then, install Boot loader software
to transfer .hex file from PC to
Firebird V robot. This software will
provide Port number, Baud rate
and other options. By selecting the
port number, .hex file can be loaded
on the Boot loader software.
6.The loaded .hex file will compile
and gives the result. If the program
has errors, then necessary
modifications to be done in the
program the compilation process
is done and other procedure to
execute the same.
III. Fire Bird V Atmega 2560
The theme Valet Parking Robot
is an autonomous system that can be
used to park the vehicles for the visitor
at the appropriate places available
nearest to OUT position in the given
parking lot having slot type, status and
number from 1 to 9.The robot has to
start at a visitor at IN position and cover
the entire arena traversing through
the black line path consisting of black
nodes. During the traversal, robot has
to identify the type of the slot (either
Resident or Visitor) and status of the
slot (either Occupied or Available) using
black nodes. If it finds slot status as
“Occupied”, then buzzer would sound
for 200ms irrespective of the slot type
and if slot status is “Available” then it
has to note down its slot number and
type. When the robot reaches the OUT
position after traversing the entire
arena, then it has to turn and park
itself at the visitor slot nearest to the
OUT position. Having parked, the robot
has to display the numbers of all the
available slots type on LCD screen as
per the format with the continuous
buzzer sound. If all the visitor’s slots
are occupied, then LCD screen should
display “No Space” for visitor slot. The
purpose of making such a robot is to
make the proper parking for the visitor
without making disturbance to the
resident’s parking area in the particular
places such as apartment building,
quarters etc.
between the sensor and the slot. During
the implementation, as per the distance
the sharp sensor would read the values
below L1 and L2 so that the slots can
be identified. This would happen for the
first node point of each slot. It is clearly
shown in Fig.2 and Fig.3
L1
Resident slot
Fig. 2 : Resident Slot sensing position by
Sharp Sensor
IV.Implementation
1. Environment Sensing:
Left Side View of
the Robot
L1-Value given by sensor as per
the distance between Sharp
sensor and Resident slot
L2
L2-Value given by the sensor
as per distance between
sharp sensor and visitor slot
Sharp Sensor-It can
be used to identify the
type of the slot in the
given theme.
Supporting tools
12 cm
IR Proximilty Sensor - It
can be used to Identify
whether the slot is
occupied by the vehicle
or available.
Fig. 1 : Left Side View of the Robot
Firebird V has two major sensors
namely Sharp sensor and IR Proximity
sensor. Sharp sensor is used to identify
the type of the slot whereas IR proximity
sensor is used to detect the state of
the parking slot. These sensors are
positioned as shown in Fig.1 to detect
the type and state of the parking slot in
the given theme.
When positioning the sharp sensor
with supporting tools on the Firebird
V robot, it will sense the object and
would read the value denoted as L1
(maximum value given by sensor) if
the slot is resident. The sharp sensor
would read the value denoted as L2
(maximum value given by sensor) if the
slot is visitor. Both L1 and L2 values
are obtained based on the distance
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Visitor Slot
Fig. 3 Visitor Slot sensing by Sharp Sensor
2. Working of Sharp Sensor
This sensor, working is based on
the principle of Angle of Reflection, that
can be used to identify the type of the
slot in the given arena. This sensor is
capable to identify the objects between
the distances of 10cm and 80cm. In
the given task, flags have different
dimensions. Based on the dimensions,
both resident flag and visitor flag has
difference in distance from the node
point of the black line in the given arena.
This difference in distance can easily be
sensed by sharp sensor. Based on this
difference in distance, it will provide
different values so that type of the slot
would be identified
RESEARCH FRONT
M-Value Representing the
occupied status given by
IR sensor
M
Vehicle
Fig. 4 : IR Sensor Vehicle Sensing Position
3. Working of Proximity Sensor
It can be used to identify the
status of the slot such as “Occupied or
Available”. This sensor can generally be
used to detect the object within 10cm
distance. Based on the presence and
absence of the object, this sensor will
give us the different values. Hence, the
status of the slot can be identified.
4.Working of White Line Following
Sensor
These sensors could be used to
make the robot to follow the black
line for traversing the arena. During
locomotion, the left and right white line
sensors would follow the white surface
of the arena whereas the center white
line sensor would follow the black
surface indicating a value greater than
40.
5.Locomotion
DC motors are used for the
locomotion purpose includes direction
and velocity control in the Firebird V
robot. For the direction control of DC
motor, the dual driver IC L293D could
be used. The speed of the DC motors
is controlled by using PWM techniques.
To move the robot in any one of the
specific direction, enabling the direction
control using pins of PORT A register
from PA(0) - PA(3) as per the logical
level and Motor driver IC L293D. The
logical level includes Forward motion,
backward motion, Soft left and right etc.
DC motors velocity control can be done
using PWM technique.
In addition, Timer 5 can be used
for PWM generation and controlling
the speed of motors. Fig.5 describes
the overall view of the locomotion of
the robot in the given arena. The robot
starts at IN position in the arena. For
traversing the entire arena, the Robot
has to follow the black line using white
line sensor. When the robot follows the
black line, the left and right white line
sensors have to follow the white surface
whereas the center white line sensor
has to follow the black surface. In each
node points of the arena, all the white
line sensors values are greater than 40
indicating a black surface.
So, the robot may stop at the node
point depending upon the time. During
the stop position of the robot at a node
point, the positioned sharp and IR
proximity sensors will identify the type
and status of the slot as illustrated in
Fig. 6. After identifying the type and
status of the slot, the robot has to follow
the black line. The same process is
repeated for each node present in the
arena.
members for e yantra competition.
The main objective of the work is to
connect embedded IOT programming
with robotics technology. As the IOT
and robotics are playing the major role
in massive scale sensor programming
domain, the new technical methods,
computational representations, tools for
deployment, programming platforms
are highly encouraged to cope with these
technical advancements. In future,
more sensor programming based
robots will be designed and launched
in the market to assist all living beings
without the intervention of any persons.
As an example, in the battle field,
human rescuing robots, multiple object
target robot and automatic enemy alert
robots are getting developed.
Sharp sensor
used to Identify
the Visitor slot
IR Proximity Sensor
used to Identify the
Status of the slot
All the
visitor
slots are
filled (as
indicated),
the Robot
has come to
OUT position
Parking of
the Robot
at available
Visitor slot and
nearest to OUT
position
Locomotion of the
Robot following
Black Line
Sharp Sensor used
to Identify the
Resident slot
Fig.5 : Locomotion view of the Robot
Robot reaches the corner so
that it has to take right in
clock wise direction
Robot reaches the corner
so that it has to take right
in clock wise direction
For each node
identifies the type
and status of the
slot by sensor used
Robot starts at IN
position and follows
the black line using
white line sensors
Fig. 6 : Theme Implementation Overview
The OUT position should stop as
shown in Fig. 7. During stop, it will
display all the available resident and
visitor slots in LCD display and the
Buzzer starts to give the beep sound
continuously for indicating the END
operation.
Conclusion
This above project has been
implemented a team of four faculty
24 u
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Fig. 7 : Visitor slot and Robot Parking
position
Algorithm
To implement the given task, the following parameters are used
in the Algorithm part
R - Represents ‘Resident Slot’
V - Represents ‘Visitor Slot’
RS - Represents ‘Status of Resident Slot’
VS - Represents ‘Status of Visitor Slot’
JV - Junction Value for Plating the Robot near to OUT
position
l1, l2 - Maximum value of sharp sensor at resident slot
and IR proximity sensor at visitor slot respectively
Steps
1. Start the Program
2. Initialize the condition variables R=0, V=0, VS=0, JV=0, RV=0.
3. Robot has to follow the black line.
4. If the robot reaches black node, the junction value increased
by 1 and read the sharp sensor value. Else go to step 3
5. If the sharp sensor value is less than L1, then R value
increased by 1; Move to next node and read IR sensor value.
If it is less than M, Buzzer ON. Else RS increased by 1 and
Go to Step 3
6. Else if sharp sensor value less than L2, then V value increased
by 1; Move to next node and read IR sensor value. If it is less
than M, Buzzer ON. Else VS increased by 1; Set RV = IV and Go
to step 3
7. If JV = 20 and RVI = 0, Set JV = JV - RV. Else Go to OUT position
and Buzzer ON.
8. If JV=0, Rotate 90 degree right and Stop. Else Rotate 180
degree; Move to JVm node then rotate 90 degree left and move
to destination.
9. Display the values of RS, VS and Continuous Buzzer ON
10. Stop the program.
References
1. www.e-yantra.com
2. www.elsi.com
3. www.axeda.com
www.csi-india.org
RESEARCH FRONT
About the Authors:
Mr. S. S. Aravinth is pursuing Ph.D
in the Department of CSE, Knowledge
Institute of Technology, Salem. His
research area is Wireless Sensor
Networks. He can be reached at ssacse@
kiot.ac.in.
Mr. R. Karthick is working as an
Assistant Professor in the Department of
CSE, Knowledge Institute of Technology,
Salem.
Mr. P. Sachidhanandham
is
pursuing Ph.D in the Department of
CSE, Knowledge Institute of Technology,
Salem. His research area is Wireless
Sensor Networks.
Mr. M. Senthikumar [CSI N1171775] is working as an Assistant
Professor in the Department of CSE,
Knowledge Institute of Technology,
Salem.
Robotics Research Centers in India
Compiled by: Dr. Vipin Tyagi, Editor

Autonomous Robotics Lab, IIT Delhi
Research Areas : Robot Control, Mobile Robotics,
Tele-Operation of Robots, Computer Vision based
Robot Control, Haptics and Virtual Reality for Robots,
Education in Robotics
Advanced Reactor Technologies and Nuclear Power
Bhabha Atomic Research Center
Research Areas : Robotics & remote handling
Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Defense
Research and Development Organization, Bangalore
Research Areas : Surveillance/Reconnaissance
robotics, Industrial Robotics, Educational Robotics,
Search and Rescue Robots, Autonomous Robots
Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute
CMERI, Durgapur, West Bengal
Research Areas : Robotics and Mechatronics, Advanced
Manufacturing Technology, Rapid Prototyping and
Tooling
Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research CIMFR,
Dhanbad, Jharkhand
Research Areas : Application of ‘Robots’ in difficult and
risky situations
Centre for Robotics and ControlIIT Indore
Research Areas : Parallel Robots and Platforms,
Underwater and Field Robots, Rehabilitation Robots
Center for Robotics and Intelligent Systems BITS Pilani
Research Areas : Humanoid Robots, Autonomous
Ground Vehicles, Quad-Rotors
Intelligent Systems Laboratory IIT Kanpur
Research Areas : Intelligent control, Assistive robotics,
Cognitive modeling and Quantum learning systems
Mechatronics with Robotic Applications Lab IIT Ropar
Research Areas : Customised Reconfigurable
Manipulators, Integrated Design and Fabrication of
Robots using Evolutionary Algorithm
Mobile Robotics Lab IISc Bangalore

Research Areas : Swarm Robotics, Multi-Robot
Systems, Cooperative Robotics, Computer Vision, Aerial
Robotics, SLAM
Robotics LabIIT Guwahati
Research Areas : Bio-Inspired, Networked and
Emotional Robots, Intelligent Cyber Physical Systems,
Speech - Analysis, Recognition & Categorization
Robotics Laboratory IIT Madras
Research Areas : Underwater Robotics, Mobile
Robotics, Manipulator Kinematics, Medical Robotics
Robotics and Intelligent Systems Lab IIT Kharagpur
Research Areas : Underwater Robotics, Humanoid
Robotics, Biomedical Robotics, Virtual and Remote
Robotics
Robotics Research Lab IIIT Hyderabad
Research Areas : Mobile and Aerial Robotics, Robotic
Vision, Mechanism Design and Multi Robotic Systems
Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Lab IIIT Allahabad
Research Areas : Human Robot Interaction, Humanoid
Robots, Autonomous Robotics
Robotics and Automation Lab CSIR, CMERI Durgapur
Research Areas : Underwater Robotics, Mobile
Robotics, Robotics and Automation, Dynamics and
Control, Sensor Fusion
Robotics and Control Lab IIT Roorkee
Research Areas : Space robots, Legged Robots, In Vivo
robots, Bionic robots, Dynamics and Control, Fault
identification and reconfiguration
Surface Robotics Lab CSIR, CMERI Durgapur
Research Areas : Surface Robotics, Mechatronics
e-Yantra [http://e-yantra.org/] is an initiative to spread
education in Embedded systems and Robotics by IIT Bombay
sponsored by Ministry of Human Resource Development
through the National Mission on Education through ICT
(NMEICT).
u 25 u
RESEARCH FRONT
Energy harvesting for Micro/Nano Robots using
a Micro Scale Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Farm
based on Movement of Fish in a School
Sreekant Damodara1
N. N. Sharma1,2
Mechanical Engineering Department, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani
School of Automobiles, Mechanical & Mechatronics, Manipal University, Jaipur
1
1,2
On board harvesting of energy in micro/nano robots is the biggest
challenge in their realization. I the present work, a design for harnessing
energy for swarm of nanorobots is presented. The paper summarizes
the results of the time dependent simulations that were carried out on
COMSOL Multiphysics to evaluate the energy output from a microsized Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT). Further, the paper tests the
possibility of utilizing the flow patterns in a fish school to increase the
efficiency of the turbines in the micro domain. This method utilizes
pairs of counter-rotating turbines located near each other such that
the rotation of one aids the rotation of the other. A simulation with eight
such VAWT’s in the required pattern was designed and a simulation
was run to evaluate the improvement in efficiency. The efficiency of
extracting power from the wind farm was 30% more than that from the
individual turbine.
1.Introduction:
A wind turbine is a device that
converts kinetic energy from the wind
into electrical power. Today’s wind
turbines are manufactured in a wide
range of vertical and horizontal axis
types and are arranged in large arrays
known as wind farms which are
becoming an increasingly important
source of renewable energy. Among
the different types, two most commonly
found arrangements are horizontal axis
and vertical axis turbines [1].
Horizontal-axis
wind
turbines
(HAWTs) have the main rotor shaft
and electrical generator at the top of
a tower, and must be pointed into the
wind. On most horizontal wind turbine
farms, a spacing of about 6-10 times the
rotor diameter is often upheld. However,
for large wind farms distances of about
15 rotor diameters should be more
economically optimal [1].
Vertical-axis wind turbines (or
VAWTs) have the main rotor shaft
arranged vertically. One advantage of
this arrangement is that the turbine
does not need to be pointed into the wind
to be effective. Another advantage of
VAWT’s is the simpler construction and
consequent improvement in reliability
of the turbine. Recent research by
Dabiri et.al [2] suggests that vertical
wind turbines may be placed much
more closely together as long as an
alternating pattern of rotation is created
allowing blades of neighboring turbines
to move in the same direction as they
approach one another.
Miniaturization of VAWT’s has shown
promising results for energy harvesting
and is a very promising result for
harnessing energy to propel micro/nano
robots. Micro/Nano robots are more
propitious to fly or swim [18-23]. In this
context, a design based on miniaturized,
micro turbines utilizing surrounding
wind flow speeds can generate large
amounts of power. A.H. Epstein et.al
[12, 14] used a turbine 1 cm long paired
26 u
u
with a heat engine consuming hydrogen
to generate 10 W of power. Another
work by Herrault et.al [13] utilizes a 6.35
mm diameter turbine rotating at 20,000
rpm to generate 0.8 mW of power. J.L
Steyn [15] analyzed a motor that can be
paired with the heat engine to operate at
55,000 rpm generating 20 mW of power.
Frechette et.al [16] describes the use of
a 4.2 mm diameter rotor at 15,000 rpm
to generate 0.5 mW of power. Iizuka et.al
[17] describes a 3 mm diameter turbine
rotating at 58,000 rpm to generate 6.2
mV of power.
In all the published literature on
VAWT, there are no turbines which utilize
wind velocities in the order of a few mm/s
from natural winds with turbines smaller
than 1 cm in diameter to generate power.
In the present work, we designed micro
turbines which are of dimensions in
micro meter range and developed a
scheme to increase the efficiency of
energy harvesting taking inspiration from
the movement of fish in schools. Aiding
the energy harvesting by patterned flow
synergized by placement of turbines in
a configuration, we have increased the
efficiency of energy capture from the
wind. We have obtained a 30% increase
in efficiency of energy capture from the
wind farm as compared to an individual
turbine. The scheme is adaptable to
propel micro/nano nanorobots.
2. Design and simulation:
The efficiency of a turbine is defined
by the ratio of power extracted from the
turbine to the power available in the wind
and is termed the power coefficient of
the turbine. The power coefficient Cp has
a maximum theoretical value of 16/27 =
0.593 termed as the Betz limit [3], and
www.csi-india.org
or swim [18-23]. In this context, a design based on miniaturized, micro turbines utilizing surrounding
wind flow speeds can generate large amounts of power. A.H. Epstein et.al [12, 14] used a turbine 1 cm
long paired with a heat engine consuming hydrogen to generate 10 W of power. Another work by
Herrault et.al [13] utilizes a 6.35 mm diameter turbine rotating at 20,000 rpm to generate 0.8Table
mW 1ofDesign Parameters
power. J.L Steyn [15] analyzed a motor that can be paired with the heat engine to operate at 55,000 rpm
Diameter
of shaft
20µm
generating 20 mW of power. Frechette et.al [16] describes the use of a 4.2 mm diameter rotor
at 15,000
ofatblade
200µm
rpm to generate 0.5 mW of power. Iizuka et.al [17] describes a 3 mm diameter turbineRadius
rotating
Diameter of turbine 800 µm
58,000 rpm to generate 6.2 mV of power.
RESEARCH FRONT
Thickness of blade
20µm
In all the published literature on VAWT, there are no turbines which utilize wind velocities Height
in the order
of turbine
100 µm
of a few mm/s from natural winds with turbines smaller than 1 cm in diameter to generate power. In the
present work, we designed micro turbines which are of dimensions in micro meter range and developed
a scheme to increase the efficiency of energy harvesting
takingof
inspiration
fromSavonius
the movement
of fish
The model
three blade
turbine
wasinsimulated in COMSOL Multiphysics 4.4 using a 2-D fluidschools. Aiding the energy harvesting by patterned
synergizedmodel.
by placement
of turbines
in aadded were Inlet, outlet and a rigid connector to allow
staticflow
interaction
Additional
conditions
configuration,
we have
increased
the efficiency
energy
capture
fromthe
the
wind.
We
have
a used were a wind velocity of 0.028 m/s
large
scale
wind
turbines
canoffree
approach
following
inshaft.
Table
2. obtained
rotation
about
Boundary
conditions
for a volumeparameters
30% increase in efficiency of energy capture from the wind farm as compared
to an individual turbine.
flow
of air =at
5.6𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚3 . The mesh used was free triangular with automatic remeshing enabled
with
this
level
of
performance
while

a =the
1200µm = 1.5D
The scheme is adaptable to propel micro/nano nanorobots.
Table 2: Results from Simulation of
condition for remeshing set at quality lesser than 0.05. A Time Dependent study was set up for 6s with
the same time achieving very
high
b = 800µm = 1D
strict time marching and the segregated Single
solver wasTurbine
used. The maximum number of iterations per step
2. Design and simulation:
mechanical-to-electrical
conversion
c = 1600µm = 2D
was set to 100 and the absolute tolerance was set to 5 × 10−4 with a relative tolerance of 0.01. Torque
Starting
generated 15 pNm
The efficiency of a turbine is defined by the ratio of power extracted from
the turbine Torque
to the power
efficiency.
Miniaturized and power
energy
were calculated from the pressure distribution obtained which is tabulated in Table
2.
Where
available in the wind and is termed the power coefficient of the turbine. The power coefficient Cp has a
Average
generated 0.099 pNm
harvesters
are
totermed
have
lower
maximum theoretical
valueexpected
of 16/27 = 0.593
as the
Betz limit [3], and
large scale Torque
wind turbines
2a is the downstream distance between
can approach
this primarily
level of performance
while at of
the design
same time achieving very high mechanical-toCp
values,
because
electrical conversion efficiency. Miniaturized energy harvesters are expected to have lower Cp values,
2 turbines of the same line
and
fabrication
constraints
associated.
primarily because of design and fabrication constraints associated.
2b is the lateral distance between 2
The tip speed ratio (T.S.R) of the
The tip speed ratio (T.S.R) of the turbine is defined as
turbines
turbine is defined as
Velocity of tip of blade
𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎𝑎 𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣×𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟
2c is the lateral distance between lines
𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠 𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 =
=
Velocity of wind stream.
𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣𝑣 𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠
of similar rotating turbines
The T.S.R is related to efficiency
D is the diameter of the turbine = 800µm
The T.S.R
is related
to efficiencyvalue
and the optimum
value ofvaries
T.S.R varies with the shape of the turbine.
and
the
optimum
of T.S.R
for our design
with
theturbine,
shape
the turbine.
For a single
we of
considered
a design of a three blade Savonius wind turbine [4] due to its
The configuration of turbine farm is
simplicity
and a
ease
of fabrication.
Savoniuswe
turbines
work based on a difference in drag on either side of
For
single
turbine,
considered
shown in Fig 3.
the blade. Test results have shown that the Savonius scaled-down wind turbines with three airfoils
aperform
design
of a three blade Savonius wind
better than the turbines with two or four blades when the other parameters are kept the same
With simulation conditions being
turbine
[4] due
for all three turbines
[4]. to its simplicity and ease
exactly
the same as in the case of a
Fig. 1 : Simulated velocity plot
of
fabrication.
Savonius
turbines
For simulation
purposes, the
design parameters
consideredwork
are tabled in Table 1
Figure 1: Simulated velocity plot
single turbine, we obtained average
based on a difference in drag on either
torque and angular velocity over the 6
Angular velocity
10.05 rad/s
side of the blade. Test results have
second period and calculated the power
Tablepower
2: Results from Simulation of Single
Turbine pW
shown that the Savonius scaled-down
Average
0.995
obtainable and Tip speed ratio of the
wind turbines with three airfoils perform
Torque
generated 15 pNm
PowerStarting
in wind
stream
2.6 pW
turbines in the wind farm. The obtained
Average
Torque
generated
0.099
pNm
better than the turbines with two or four
results are shown in table 3. We also
Angular
velocity
10.05
rad/s
Cp
0.385
blades when the other parameters are
Average power
0.995 pW
calculated the power Coefficient of the
kept the same for all three turbines [4].
T.S.R of turbine
0.014
wind farm as a whole as tabulated in
For simulation purposes, the
A graph is then plotted of the
table 4
design parameters considered are
torque obtained at each instant of
tabled in Table 1
time as shown in fig 2. The torque
3.Discussion:
curve smoothens as the turbine enters
Table 1 : Design Parameters
The power requirements for
steady state. After a time of 2 seconds,
several micromotors are in the vicinity
Diameter of shaft
20µm
the torque stabilizes about an average
of a few pNm [5] which are interesting
torque of 0.099pNm with a very small
Radius of blade
200µm
and promising being in the vicinity of
variation. A high starting torque of
requirements for propulsion of micro/
Diameter of turbine
800 µm
15pNm is also obtained. Figure 3 shows
nano robots. The wind farm presented in
Thickness of blade
20µm
the position of a point on the edge of the
the work easily generates the required
turbine with respect to change in time
Height of turbine
100 µm
power at a wind speed of 0.028. The
and shows the slow stabilization of the
The model of three blade Savonius
increase in Cp and T.S.R indicates an
turbine.
turbine was simulated in COMSOL
increase in the efficiency of the capture
Next, a wind farm of turbines
Multiphysics 4.4 using a 2-D fluidof energy from the wind. The peak Cp
was
configured
for
simulation
static interaction model. Additional
of a savonius based turbine is around
taking a cue from fish schools. The
conditions added were Inlet, outlet and
0.15 in the macro domain and is usually
configured arrangement is based on
a rigid connector to allow free rotation
achieved at a T.S.R of around 0.79 [6].
the arrangement of shed vortices
about the shaft. Boundary conditions
The increase in Cp to approximately
in the wake of schooling fish. These
used were a wind velocity of 0.028 m/s
0.385 due to miniaturization and 0.5
shed vortices form a reversed Karman
for a volume flow of air = 5.6. The mesh
in configuration indicates a possible
vortex street in the wake of the fish
used was free triangular with automatic
avenue for the further development of
[2]. While vortex formation does not
remeshing enabled with the condition
energy harvesting devices.
occur in the micro domain, simulations
for remeshing set at quality lesser than
Comparative analysis with a 2 cm
are conducted to verify whether the
0.05. A Time Dependent study was set
diameter turbine [7] operating at a
arrangement results an increase in
up for 6s with strict time marching and
much higher wind speed of 10m/s which
efficiency and the extent of impact. The
the segregated solver was used. The
produces a power of 4.3mW indicates
positions of the vortices in Fig 2 are the
maximum number of iterations per
the much higher efficiency of energy
locations of the turbines.
step was set to 100 and the absolute
capture in the present method. The
Fish in schools typically swim
tolerance was set to with a relative
efficiency gains increase with farm size
𝑏𝑏
𝑐𝑐
in schools
typically swim
with ≅ 0.3 and ≥ 2 [2]. InIn
consideration
of these ratios, the configured
with
consideration
tolerance of 0.01. Torque Fish
and
power
𝑎𝑎
𝑏𝑏
[2], this can be leveraged to utilize large
turbine
farm design was interrogated
the following
of theseforratios,
theparameters
configured turbine
were calculated from the
pressure
wind farms in the above mentioned
farm design was interrogated for the
distribution obtained which is tabulated
configuration to maximize the energy
• 𝑎𝑎 = 1200µ𝑚𝑚 = 1.5𝐷𝐷
•
•
Where
𝑏𝑏 = 800µ𝑚𝑚 = 1𝐷𝐷
u 27 u
𝑐𝑐 = 1600µ𝑚𝑚 = 2𝐷𝐷
2a is the downstream distance between 2 turbines of the same line
Power in wind stream
Cp
T.S.R of turbine
2.6 pW
0.385
0.014
Figure 3: Position of point on turbine with respect to time
Next, a wind farm of turbines was configured for simulation taking a cue from fish schools. The
configured arrangement is based on the arrangement of shed vortices in the wake of schooling fish.
These shed vortices form a reversed Karman vortex street in the wake of the fish [2]. While vortex
A graph is then plotted of the torque obtained at each instant of timeformation
as shown in
fig 2.
Theoccur
torquein the micro domain, simulations are conducted to verify whether the
does
not
curve smoothens as the turbine enters steady state. After a time of 2arrangement
seconds, the results
torque stabilizes
an increase in efficiency and the extent of impact. The positions of the vortices in
about an average torque of 0.099pNm with a very small variation. A high
starting
torque
of
15pNm
Fig 2 are the locations of theisturbines.
RESEARCH FRONT
also obtained. Figure 3 shows the position of a point on the edge of the turbine with respect to change
in time and shows the slow stabilization of the turbine.
velocity.
The output from the turbines can
be further improved by using a shield to
prevent oncoming fluid from impacting
the turbine and is the subject of further
study. The efficiency gains due to the wind
Fish in schools typically swim with ≅ 0.3 and ≥ 2 [2]. In consideration of these ratios, the configured
turbine farm design was interrogated for the following parameters
farm can be increased by using a larger
• 𝑎𝑎 = 1200µ𝑚𝑚 = 1.5𝐷𝐷
farm [2]. A study can also be performed
• 𝑏𝑏 = 800µ𝑚𝑚 = 1𝐷𝐷
on the changes that can be made to
• 𝑐𝑐 = 1600µ𝑚𝑚 = 2𝐷𝐷
the pattern due to increase in laminar
Where
nature of the flow due to miniaturization
2a is the downstream distance
2 turbines behind
of the same
Figure 4:between
Vortex formation
a fishline
school
and increase in efficiency is possible by
2b is the lateral
distance
between 2 turbines
Fig.
4 : Vortex
formation behind a fish
optimizing distances between turbines.
2c is the lateral distance between lines ofschool
similar rotating turbines
The increase in efficiency of Savonius
D is the diameter of the turbine = 800µ𝑚𝑚 for our design
turbines at this scale also indicates a
The configuration of turbine farm is shown in Fig 3.
new avenue of utilizing this scaling to
1600 µ𝑚𝑚
maximize power output. In the present
work, it is shown by simulation that The
Cp of the wind farm approaches the Betz
limit at values that are close to the most
optimally designed macro-scale HAWT’s.
𝑏𝑏
𝑎𝑎
Figure 2: Torque on turbine
Fig. 2 : Torque on turbine
𝑐𝑐
𝑏𝑏
2400 µ𝑚𝑚
4.Conclusion:
In this paper, we have designed
and simulated the power output from
a miniaturized VAWT from slow moving
wind with a wind speed of 0.028 m/s. We
Figure 5: The wind farm configuration
calculated the coefficient of performance
With simulation conditions being exactly the same as in the case of a single turbine, we obtained
Fig. 3Figure
: Position
of point
turbine
3: Position of point
on turbineon
with respect
to time with
average torque and angular velocity over the 6 second period and calculated the power obtainable
and
of the
micro turbine to be 0.385 which
Fig.
5turbines
: Theinwind
respectfortosimulation
time taking a cue from fishTipschools.
speed ratio
of the
the windfarm
farm. Theconfiguration
obtained results are shown in table 3. We also
Next, a wind farm of turbines was configured
The
is higher than the 0.15 of large sized
calculated the power Coefficient of the wind farm as a whole as tabulated in table 4
configured arrangement is based on the arrangement of shed vortices in the wake of schooling fish.
Savonius turbines.
These shed vortices form a reversed Karman vortex street in the wake of the fish [2]. While vortex
formation does not occur in the micro domain, simulations are conducted to verify whether the
Further, we simulated the power
arrangement results an increase in efficiency and the extent of impact. The positions of the vortices in
output
from a wind farm consisting of
Table
3
:
Results
for
individual
turbines
Fig 2 are the locations of the turbines.
8 turbines arranged in a configuration
Average
Average Angular
Average
T.S.R
based on the vortex formation behind
Torque (pNm) velocity (2π rad/s)
power (pW)
(Tip speed ratio)
a fish school. The results from this
simulation indicate a rise in coefficient of
Turbine 1
0.239
1
1.5
0.08
performance of the wind farm from 0.385
Turbine 2
0.235
1.5
2.2
0.134
to 0.5 which approaches the Betz limit.
The usage of micro turbines to
Turbine 3
0.051
3
0.96
0.269
generate power for wobble micromotors
Turbine 4
0.024
2
0.3
0.179
in the range of a few pW is possible
from free flowing wind of 0.028 m/s. The
Turbine 5
0.0387
4
0.972
0.359
results are promising to design a similar
Turbine 6
0.017
1
0.1
0.08
scheme for propulsion of individual and
Figure 4: Vortex formation behind a fish school
swarm of micro/nano robots which are
Turbine 7
0.0001
0.2
1.2e-4
0.0179
propitious to flying/swimming.
Turbine 8
0.049
1.7
0.52
0.152
References
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Table 4 : Results for wind farm
Power in wind flow
13.1pW
Power from wind farm
6.55pW
Cp
harvested from winds and suitable for
micro/nano robots.
The advantage of using a Savonius
turbine is the generation of large
0.5
torques in place of angular velocities
making it suitable for application in
the micro domain where it is harder to
generate the torque and not the angular
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About the Authors:
Mr. Sreekant Damodara received B.E (Hons.) in Manufacturing Engineering from Birla Institute of
Technology &Science Pilani. He carried out his undergraduate thesis project in Indian Institute of Technology
Madras with Ashis Microfluidics research group and has worked with the group for an year afterwards as
a research assistant. His current research interests are in the applications of microfluidics, particularly in
droplet-microfluidics, bio-microfluidics and energy harvesters.
Prof. N. N. Sharma is currently Dean, Faculty of Engineering and Director School of Automobile,
Mechanical & Mechatronics”, at Manipal University Jaipur (MUJ. He was a faculty in Mechanical Engineering
Department at BITS Pilani for over 18 years. Dr. Sharma specialized in Robotics and was a part of team which
developed ‘ACYUT’, the humanoid from BITS. He has 3 Patents (published), over 80 technical papers in high
impact factor journals and peer reviewed National and International conferences, around two and half dozen
invited/keynote talks in India and abroad and with ten funded projects from nodal agencies like DBT, UGC,
CSIR-CEERI, NPMASS and Industries. He can be reached at [email protected].
u 29 u
A R T I C L E
Artificial Intelligence –
Are we digging our own Graves?
Sanjay Bhatia
SAP Architect, USA
I recently read somewhere that if
Auto Industry has grown at the Silicon
Valley Pace, our cars would have been
giving 200000 miles per gallon by now….
Bill Gates had reportedly said some
time back that if GM had kept up with
technology like the computer industry
has, we would all be driving $25 cars
that got 1000 miles per gallon.
I do not know if above are true
or not and I am not claiming to have
done any research on it….But the point
taken!! Nothing has grown faster, better
and smaller than our “Computers” or
so called “Machines which the human
being created to do intelligent work”…
No other pieces have changed the
face of earth in its 4 billion year history
than the Human Race has. The last 100
years have been lightening changes and
I have so far not found an appropriate
word to describe what has happened in
last 15 years…While writing this article, I
was flying from Houston to Mumbai and
must have passed thru 4 time zones,
crossed 2 oceans, 3 continents and about
15 countries airspace while this article
was finally finished..Who could imagine
this thing would be possible 40 years
back?
While better and intelligent
machines are welcome in every way as
innovation and continuous improvement
is the way of life and that is how it
should be, the question is – where does
this race stop?
Fig. 1 : Smart phone vs Computer of 70s
efficient computers then…today if we
compare a smart phone to the computer
of 70s, I think even my 4 years old
daughter would laugh at me for calling
the 70s machine as computer…… Earlier
you needed to be a Genius or a Rocket
Scientist to use a Computer….now even
a 2 year old kid can help himself on a
smart phone and at least enjoy photos
and videos….
See Fig. 1 – a smart phone is billions
times smaller than computer of 70 but
at least a trillion times faster, smarter
and better…
Anything
exponential
if
Smaller is Better –
I remember in 1995 during a
computer class while I was studying
Masters in Management Studies from
Bombay University, my professor said
he has been teaching Computers
since 70s and he had used machines
which was bigger than the class we
were sitting in…..This was still 90s and
Google was not born yet and we were
using relatively smaller but much less
uncontrolled, incorrect and in wrong
direction can not only be dangerous but
have fatal potential…Big bang theory is
one whose final impact is still unknown.
See Fig. 2 – How an earlier
computer Mouse looked and difficult
to use and now a sleek, wireless
and ergonomically better computer
mouse….frankly we don’t even need
it since most of machines are “Touch
Screen” now….
Artificial Intelligence
As the name suggests, any Non
Human, Non god created object which
is intelligent enough to think or act
Fig. 2 : First Mouse Vs Latest Mouse
30 u
u
www.csi-india.org
A R T I C L E
Fig. 3 : Comparing first flight vs. Most Sophisticated Aero planes
based on its thinking (program) may
fall under “Artificial Intelligence”. While
AI is considered to be a very highly
complicated stuff involving robotics
or super computers. To me even an
“Alarm Clock” which is programmed to
buzz or make noise on a required time
(when the hour and minute hands reach
the programmed spot) is an Artificially
Intelligent Machine. Wikipedia defines
“AI is the intelligence exhibited by
machines. In computer science,
an ideal “intelligent” machine is a
flexible rational agent that perceives
its environment and takes actions
that maximize its chance of success
at an arbitrary goal.[1] Colloquially, the
term «artificial intelligence» is likely
to be applied when a machine uses
cutting-edge techniques to competently
perform or mimic «cognitive» functions
that we intuitively associate with
human minds, such as «learning» and
«problem solving»”.
The intelligence is given to the
machine by programming the logical
steps that the machine is expected to
encounter and how it should behave or
take decisions in those circumstances.
The underlying assumption here is
that the so called Intelligent Machine
shall never encounter any situation not
envisioned in its program and therefore
the “Intelligence” can be limited or
controlled. But is it really true?
Flying Example –
It took a human being about 1900
years to learn flying but in the next just
63 years, human being reached the
nearest Celestial Object – Moon. Wright
brothers flew the first prototype of aero
plane in 1904 which could only fly less
than 200 feet distance….However in
next 63 years, humans built a machine
which could fly 3 humans nonstop for a
distance of 2 lacs+ kilometers, explore
moon in their controlled space suits
and land them safely on earth…..See
Fig. 3 comparing first flight with most
sophisticated aero planes of today.
The machine reaching moon in 1967
had a combined computer memory of 4
MB at that time, Today an average smart
phone has an in built memory of 32-64
GB…No wonder 4 countries including
India have been able to take their space
shuttles into Mars Orbit. All these super
sophisticated space shuttles, where a
command takes 12 minutes to reach
and execute from earth, are “Thinking
on their own, observing things which
no human being have ever seen and
taking smart decisions”….The fact that
Mangalyaan have been flying for more
than 365 days successfully signifies
beyond doubt that AI is real and it’s the
future.
Exponential Age –
We have recently seen so many
technologies coming from nowhere and
changing the centuries old concepts
and business processes….The trend
is going to continue and will become
faster, bigger and impact more people
than ever. Software and AI will disrupt
most traditional industries in the next
5-10 years. Uber is just a software tool
and they don’t own any cars but still
the biggest taxi company in the world.
Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company
in the world, although they don’t own
any properties. Now you can get legal
advice from IBM Watson within seconds
with 90% accuracy compared with 70%
accuracy by humans.
We all have been hearing about self
driven cars and the wonderful inroads
being made by Apple and Google…..This
will completely shake the car industry
and may force the auto insurance
industry to disappear completely within
few years as the cars will be intelligent
enough to self drive and cause less
accidents….Already many millions miles
of successful live road test drives have
been completed on busiest and most
complex roads of the world….I heard
recently on radio that trillions of bites of
data is sent to the car computers thru
its sensors every second and computers
are taking write decisions while driving
the cars at 80 miles per hour speed.
The race goes on and on and draws
millions of people into it willingly or
unwillingly…..I guess people do not
have choice to be in it anymore……every
change, good for some and bad for
some people finds its way into people’s
lives…
Fig. 4
u 31 u
A R T I C L E
Dangers of AI –
We have seen umpteen number
of Hollywood, Bollywood and Tollywood
movies wherein the Thinking Machines
have gone in wrong directions and
have mis used their super intelligence
against their inventors and tried to
control them…while each movie in the
end shows human spirit triumphing over
machines. It’s really a scary thought
that if it happens in reality do we really
stand a chance to fight the machines?
This may sound weir and funny by
scientific angle…But remember that
New York times called “Landing on
Moon” as “Biggest Joke of Century”
when Robert Goddard floated the rocket
idea in 1920….Less than 50 years later,
they corrected their error when 2 men
walked on moon and came back safely.
[Fig. 4]
Just imagine how much your
cell phone know about you……Before
2007 and the birth of smart phones,
we were using phones for talking
and computers for emails, records,
chatting and banking etc….The two
devices were not really integrated
for all practical purposes and were
two stand alone objects keeping the
critical data separate from each other.
Now with emergence of smart phones,
cloud technology etc, everything is
integrated. Cell phones today store all
our information from contacts, friends,
emails, bank accounts – their login ids
and passwords and all websites that
we are surfing etc….so it practically
knows everything about its owner…..
and smart phone is already a thinking
machine with so many features….what
if something goes intentionally wrong?
Do we have enough safeguards in place
to control the situation?
Absolute Power can corrupt
minds as we have seen in history so
many dictators acquiring great military
powers and misusing it for their own
benefit, thus causing a great danger
to the very existence of human race.
Crores of people had to sacrifice their
lives for no fault of theirs when some
powerful leaders forced World War II
and 7 years of non stop fighting. The
world witnessed the first real destroying
power of science in the form of Atom
Bombs towards the end of world war.
The leadership at that time was wise
enough to put intelligent controls
around it and thus save itself from the
destruction. As Einstein famously said
– “I know not with what weapons World
War III will be fought, but World War IV
will be fought with sticks and stones”.
Hopefully that situation would not be
witnessed at least by our generation.
Taking lessons from absolute power
situations, the world moved towards
democracy which brings the wise
balance of power and ensures power
gets distributed over many institutes
and ultimately people decide who they
want as rulers and administrators.
Drawing parallels to AI now, do we
have those safeguards in place? And
I think the bigger question is – “Who
places or ensures the safeguards” and
where….
Web is a boundary less world and
it is so difficult to control the research,
innovation and most importantly its
direction. The role of controllers and
administrators is all the more critical
with every passing day. If we look at
our history, the last 100 years have
been significantly different and most
producing one…going deeper, last 20
years, especially after emergence of
computers and internet have been
really exploding….we have seen
Microsoft, Apple, Google and most
recently Face book completely changing
the way we live, earn and connect….It’s
not a surprise as human race is setting
a perfect example of “Leveraging”
its knowledge and past learning
and increasing the pace of its future
innovation. The leverage will continue
in future and soon the completely
independent thinking machines would
become an absolute reality. If we can
have bad and selfish thinking leaders
in the past out to destroy the human
race, what is the guarantee that few
machines would also not go that route?
I am all for AI and truly believe
in improvement and betterment of
technology but at the same time
would strongly advice strong controls,
legislation and most importantly the
will in all the technological and political
leadership to regulate the research.
All players involved in AI – researches,
corporates, political parties and end
users should come together and work
towards a common cause. There should
not be any AI race to outpace each other
but to work hand in hand. That will
bring the true benefits of AI. No matter
who first puts a self driven car on road
– Google or Apple or “GooPple” but it
should be an accident free and smart
car.
References –
1. Wikipedia.com
2. NASA.GOV
3. www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25-marsorbiter-mission
4. www.loc.gov
About the Author
Mr. Sanjay Bhatia [CSI-1161672] is a SAP solution Architect working in
USA. Besides working for top consulting companies and advising many
Global 15 clients on their ERP implementation, Sanjay has created
4 ERP Apps and filed 1 Patent and 4 Copyrights in USA. He recently
created Mobile App “WaterSoldier” for water conservation and is in the
process of copyrighting and launching in India. He can be reached at
[email protected].
SEARCC Awards
SEARCC has instituted International Awards in three categories for outstanding professionals.:
• ICT Professional of the Year • ICT Researcher of the Year • ICT Educator of the Year
To find out more about the awards, please go to reimagination16.acs.org.au/searcc/searccinternational-awards/. The closing date for nominations is midnight 31 July 2016 Australian Eastern
Standard time. CSI would select 6 nominations out of the applications. Please send your nominations
to Prof. Anirban Basu, President CSI at : [email protected] or [email protected] by July
16, 2016 clearly stating the category of the award in the subject line.
Members can also apply individually by paying nomination fee of $125 AUD by midnight 31 July 2016
Australian Eastern Standard time.
32 u
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www.csi-india.org
A R T I C L E
Stream Control Transmission Protocol
The Origin of Multihoming
Anurag Jagetiya
Asstt. Professor, Department of IT, NITTTR, Chandigarh
C. RamaKrishna
Professor, and Head, Department of CSE
MLVTEC, Bhilwara
Multihoming is the ability of today’s mobile handheld devices to access Internet through their several active
network interfaces viz. Wi-Fi, 3G, and Ethernet simultaneously. Researchers have come up with many solutions
on transport and network layer for past 40 years. Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), Mobile IP,
Level 3 Multihoming Shim Protocol for IPv6 (Shim6), Host Identity Protocol (HIP), and Multi-Path TCP (MPTCP) are some of the most novel protocols submitted to IETF in this direction. SCTP was the first standard
multihomed transport layer protocol designed to address many shortcomings of conventional TCP. SCTP was
first standardized by IETF in 2000 in RFC 2960 and upgraded by RFC 4960. SCTP was first incorporated into
FreeBSD 7.0. It was the first protocol to achieve multihoming capabilities and later on many amendments were
added to enhance its features and capabilities.
Features of SCTP
SCTP not only has multihoming
capabilities but also includes many
advanced features not available in
conventional TCP. SCTP is a reliable,
message oriented (like UDP), and, full
duplex protocol. It not only provides
most of the features of TCP like flow
& congestion control, ordered data
delivery but also provides additional
services like: Multihoming to thwart
network layer failure, partial reliability
to support real time applications, multistreaming etc. [1] [2].
SCTP Resilience to TCP’s SYN
Flooding Attack
In TCP, if a client sends an initial
connection set-up SYN segment, then
server responds by SYNACK segment,
reserves entry in its state table and wait
for client’s ACK. Therefore, if a malicious
system, as shown in figure 1 persistently
sends millions of connection requesting
SYNs, then server will have to keep on
sending SYNACKs. But, the malicious
client is not confirming server’s
SYNACK by its corresponding ACK.
This may exhaust server’s state tables/
buffers and no space will be left for
legitimate sessions. SCTP uses four
way handshake mechanism to thwart
against SYN flooding Denial of Service
attack possible in TCP. Session setup in
SCTP uses following four steps between
client and server:
Client sends INIT chunk having
‘verification tag’ value.

Server responds by INIT ACK with
its own ‘verification tag’ and a ‘state
cookie’.
Cookie Echo: Client sends the state
cookie back to server
Cookie ACK: Final acknowledge
from server to client.
SCTP does not reserve any
resources for a new session without
completing all the steps of four way
handshaking. That’s why SCTP is
resilient to flooding and masquerade
attacks [1]. SCTP provides support to
graceful close (shutdown) or ungraceful
close (abort) by the request of the user.
But, unlike TCP, SCTP doesn’t provide
half open state where one side can send
while the other has requested the end.
In SCTP, association will break down if
any of the peer requests shut down.
Fig. 1 : SYN Flooding attack in TCP
SCTP Multi Streaming
In TCP, sender side uses sequence
numbers to all the segments sent
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to receiver, these segments choose
different paths to reach at the
destination. Therefore, receiving side
need to re-arrange these segments
to deliver it to the destination process.
Now, suppose a segment is lost in the
way, then, receiver side, while waiting for
the lost segment, keeps all the received
segments in its buffer. Thus, application
layer process, in spite of being ready
to absorb data has to wait while
transport layer reassembles the arrived
segments. This situation is referred as
head of line blocking in TCP. In situations
where segments are sequential in
nature, it becomes imperative to
follow strict ordering. But, head of line
blocking becomes unnecessary in many
other situations where segments are
carrying independent data [3]. SCTP
provide much finer grain control to
such situation with the help of multistreaming i.e., a sending application
can specify a stream number out
of available 65535 streams in SCTP.
Therefore, a lost packet in stream N
will not cause head of line blocking in
stream M. Even SCTP can behave as
UDP in situation where messages are
not inter-dependent and can be sent
independently. So the received message
is stored in the receiving side buffer of
transport layer and can be processed
immediately by the application layer
process.
SCTP Multihoming
Multihoming
was
primarily
A R T I C L E
designed for the environment requiring
high application availability like
Signaling System 7 (telephony signaling
protocol). Later, IETF standardized
SCTP as general purpose transport
protocol because SCTP’s multihoming
feature was attractive in wireless
environment [4]. SCTP ensures strong
association between two endpoints of
a connection and each of that may be
reached by one or more transport layer
address (IP addresses). During initial
connection setup of SCTP multihomed
environment, both the end point
exchanges a list of available transport
layer address (IP addresses). Then, both
the end points define a primary path to
exchange data. Besides, this primary
path, SCTP endpoints also keep track
of alternative paths as shown in Fig.
2 [5]. Then, SCTP sender usually uses
the same path or destination address
until being instructed by the application
layer to change the path. If, at any
point of time, primary destination is
found inactive by SCTP’s periodic
heartbeat messages, SCTP may switch
to alternate destination address and
retransmit the message [1].
SCTP transport address contains
SCTP port number and one specific
IP address. A SCTP association is
defined by the couple of transport layer
addresses on both the sides. Following
example illustrates an association
having single interface on client side
and two interfaces on server side:
{ [192.0.0.1: 80] [10.1.1.1, 10.1.1.2:
7010] }
Here 192.0.0.1: 80 is the transport
address of Endpoint#1
and 10.1.1.1, 10.1.1.2: 7010 is the
transport address of Endpoint#2 where
two IP addresses are bound to a single
SCTP port number.
In fact, an SCTP endpoint may
contains multiple transport addresses
that each contains one unique IP
address and share the same SCTP port
number. Thus a SCTP port endpoint has
exactly one port number. SCTP works
at transport layer, thus provides a host
centric approach. And, no intermediate
devices are involved in this process.
Therefore, in order to use multihoming
features, both the communicating
parties need to be agreed upon this
service.
Failure Detection in SCTP
Failure detection is a vital feature
in multihomed environment, both the
parties, involved in communication
should have the capability to detect
failure on time. A failure indicates
that the packets are unable to reach
the destination on the current path.
There can be several possible reasons
of a failure viz. configuration issues at
routers, dis-functional intermediate
device, etc. In order to detect failure,
SCTP uses heartbeat mechanism and
status of data traffic. Heartbeat is a
request and response based periodic
phenomena in which one SCTP end point
sends a heartbeat request message to
another. Counter side sends a heartbeat
acknowledgement to respond the
request and indicates no failure. Both
the end points of SCTP maintains error
counter for each destination. This error
counters increments if retransmission
of a chunk occurred or the end point
Fig. 2 : SCTP Multihomed Environment
34 u
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doesn’t receive the response of
heartbeat. When this value exceeds the
protocol parameter ‘path.max.retrans’,
sender assumes that this destination
address of the peer is not reachable
and the end point chooses another
destination address which was earlier
confirmed as reachable.
Challenges to adopt SCTP as a
Multihomed Protocol
The purpose of multihoming feature
is to simultaneously use multiple paths
effectively to improve reliability and
throughput. While, SCTP is primarily
designed to support retransmission
and failover i.e. it has been found that
it doesn’t support other multihoming
requirements viz. load sharing, load
balancing, transport layer handover
etc. [6]. SCTP derived its congestion
control algorithms from TCP which
are not designed keeping multihoming
in mind. Congestion control in SCTP
is more complicated as different
destination addresses use different
data paths between the two end points.
Therefore, separate congestion control
will be required for both the paths.
Sender has to keep track of a separate
congestion control parameter for each
of the connection at destination. The
parameters reserved for congestion
control are gradually released if not
used by a connection for a long time. For
network compatibility, there are issues
with various middle boxes (especially
NATs) that are unaware of SCTP and
consequently end up blocking it. For
application compatibility, applications
need to actively choose to use SCTP,
and with the deployment issues, very
few choose to do so [7].
Actually, most of the existing
applications are primarily designed to
run with either TCP or UDP. In order
to use the Multihoming capabilities
of SCTP, existing software have to
be modified i.e., application need to
be aware with the presence of SCTP.
However, several APIs are defined for
application to create an SCTP socket [5].
Summarizing, SCTP can only provide
the ability to recognize multiple paths
so that connection can be shift from one
to another during a fault. But, it doesn’t
provide facility to use multiple paths
simultaneously to transfer data [8].
SCTP is not interoperable with TCP, and
www.csi-india.org
A R T I C L E
that poses a risk in the mind of people
who want to implement SCTP. Due to this
reason, developers are also less likely to
develop their application that works with
SCTP.
Extensions added to SCTP
To equip legacy applications
with fault tolerant capabilities of
SCTP multihoming, a translating
mechanism of Shim layer that translates
application layer system calls to TCP
into corresponding calls to SCTP has
also developed. This procedure remains
transparent to application layer and the
Shim layer backward compatible to TCP
[9].
Later,
a
Dynamic
Address
Reconfiguration (DAR) extension is
added in SCTP to make it mobility
enabled transport layer protocol. DAR
extension provides transport layer
handover management in SCTP. With
DAR extension SCTP endpoints can
dynamically add or delete an IP address
to an ongoing association and request to
set the primary destination during active
SCTP association [10]. This extension
was required because many modern
computers allow for dynamic addition
and deletion of network cards a.k.a.
hot-pluggable cards. In fact, in IPv6, a
provider can renumber a network, so
in order to take advantage of this new
configuration, transport association
must be restarted. This extended version
of SCTP with DAR is referred as mSCTP
by IETF and standardized in RFC 5061
[11].
References
1. R. Stewart, “Stream Control
Transmission Protocol,” RFC 4960,
Sept. 2007
2. T.
Daniel
Wallace,
Abdallah
Sham., “A Review of Multihoming
Issues Using the Stream Control
3.
4.
5.
6.
Transmission
Protocol,”
IEEE
communications surveys & tutorials,
vol. 14, no. 2, second quarter 2012,
pp. 565-578
Stewart, Randall, Michael Tüxen,
and Peter Lei. “SCTP: What is it,
and how to use it?” (2008)
Budzisz, L., Ferrus, R., Casadevall,
F., Amer, P., ”On Concurrent
Multipath Transfer in SCTPBased
Handover
Scenarios,”
Communications, 2009. ICC ‘09. IEEE
International Conference on, Year:
2009, PP: 1 - 6
Shinta
Sugimoto,
Brian
E.
Carpenter “A Comparative Analysis
of Multihoming Solution,” Nippon
Ericsson K.K., Ericsson Research
Japan, 2006
Guanhua Ye; Saadawi, T.N.;
Myung Lee, “IPCC-SCTP: an
enhancement to the standard SCTP
to support multi-homing efficiently
Performance,” Computing, and
Communications,
2004
IEEE
International Conference, Year:
2004, pp. 523 - 530
7. A. Ford, C. Raiciu, M. Handley, S.
Barre, J. Iyengar “Architectural
Guidelines for Multipath TCP
Development,” RFC 6182, March,
2011
8. K. Alexandros, Kostopoulos, A.;
Warma, H.; Leva, T.; Heinrich,
B.; Ford, A.; Eggert, L.,”Towards
Multipath
TCP
Adoption:
Challenges and opportunities, Next
Generation Internet (NGI),” 6th
EURO-NF Conference, Year: 2010,
pp: 1 - 8
9. Ryan W. Bickhart, Ryan W.,
”Transparent
TCP-to-SCTP
translation
Shim
layer”
(Unpublished master’s thesis).
Delaware Univ Newark Dept
Of Computer And Information
Sciences, 2005
10. Łukasz
Budzisz
et.al,
”On
Concurrent Multipath Transfer in
SCTP-based handover scenarios”
11. R. Stewart et al., “Stream Control
Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
Dynamic Address Reconfiguration,”
RFC 5061, Sept. 2007
About the Author
Mr. Anurag Jagetiya [CSI - 01081789] is an Assistant
Professor at MLV Government Textile & Engineering College,
Bhilwara (Rajasthan). He is pursuing M.E. in Computer Science
& Engineering from NITTTR, Chandigarh. His research interests
are Computer Network, Cyber Security, and ICT in Education. He
can be reached at [email protected].
Dr. RamaKrishna Challa is Professor and Head, Department
of Computer Science at NITTTR, Chandigarh. He has more than
90 papers to his credit in many international and national journals
and conferences. His research interests are Computer Networks,
Wireless Networks, Cryptography & Cyber Security, E-Learning,
and Cloud Computing.
Benefits for CSI members: Knowledge sharing and Networking

Participating in the International, National, Regional chapter events of CSI at discounted rates
Contributing in Chapter activities
Off ering workshops/trainings in collaboration with CSI
Joining Special Interest Groups (SIG) for research, promotion and dissemination activities for selected domains, both
established and emerging
Delivering Guest lecturers in educational institutes associated with CSI
Voting in CSI elections
Becoming part of CSI management
u 35 u
I N N O V AT I O N S I N I T
A Model for Determining Software Product
Performance Maturity
Rajiv Thanawala
Head, Product Experience Center
of Excellence, Tata Consultancy Services
Performance
is
a
vital
characteristic of any software product.
From an end-user’s perspective, it is
important that a software product has
all the required functional capabilities.
However, that is not enough. How
quickly it performs those functionalities
and how optimally it uses system
resources are also equally important.
Today, software applications and
products are not just judged by how fully
they cover all functional requirements.
Performance is an important driver that
also determines a product’s success.
When building a software product,
optimal performance is ensured only
by consciously adopting the best
practices of performance engineering
throughout the development lifecycle. It is important to identify a
measure of adherence to such best
practices throughout the software
product development life cycle. This
is essential to ensure that the product
development process is aligned to meet
end-user performance expectations.
An appropriate performance maturity
model can be one reference for deriving
such a measure of adherence.
Over the last few years, we in
Performance Engineering team have
assessed performance of about 50
software products and solutions
developed in house in TCS. From our
experience of working with varied
teams using heterogeneous technology
stacks and catering to varied business
verticals, we noticed that if timely
recommendations on maturity of
performance are provided to product
development teams throughout the
development life cycle, they tend to
develop products that have optimal
performance.
While we gave such feedback
based on our experience, we realized
Mohan Jayaramappa
Tata Consultancy Services
Bangalore
Sreejith Balakrishnan
Tata Consultancy Services
Kochi
that it is better to enable product
development teams and empower them
to be independent. We therefore trained
product development teams in using
specific performance assessment tools.
In addition, it was essential to provide a
reference model providing best practices
for conducting specific performance
engineering activities at specific stages
throughout the development life cycle.
We searched for such a reference model
and assessed existing performance
assessment methods and guidelines.
Our search revealed that there were no
maturity models available for gauging
a degree of adherence to performance
best practices. The existing assessment
methods lack quantifiable metrics for
an objective review of performance
quality and also lack increasing levels of
performance maturity, using which one
can strive for continuous improvement
of performance.
Since we did not find any model that
matched our requirement, we developed
our own Performance Maturity Model
(PMM). Based on the degree to which
performance engineering best practices
are established, PMM classifies
software product performance into one
of the following four levels: (Refer Fig.
1 - Performance Maturity Model)
A software product, for which no
performance management planning
is done and no activities are carried
out to incorporate performance
characteristics, can be classified as
Level 0.
Level 1 (Basic):
The
product’s
performance
expectations are clearly stated and
tested on relevant infrastructure.
Level 2 (Oriented):
In addition to meeting Level 1
requirements, a product’s code and
36 u
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databases are tuned appropriately.
Level 3 (Optimized):
In addition to meeting Level 2
requirements:
The product is architected and
designed as per performance
requirements.

Design principles and design
patterns suited to performance
are
incorporated.
Response
time requirements are traced to
technology component level. There
is a provision for incorporating
performance controls.
Level 4 (Leadership):
At level 4, the product meets
Level 3 expectations and in addition,
its performance is benchmarked
against industry standards / competing
products in the same space.
The Key Performance Areas (KPAs)
identified for determining these four
maturity levels are:
1. Work load characterization
Identify key transactions and
distribute load among these
transactions. The characterization
can be one of the following:
ad-hoc
based on industry standards
based on experience
2.Performance Oriented
Architecture and Design
Experience based performance
characteristics are incorporated
into the product architecture.
Design principles and patterns
are incorporated specifically for
performance.
3. Optimized Code
4. Tuned Database
5. Performance testing
The product is tested on specified
www.csi-india.org
INNOVATIONS IN IT
Performance Maturity Model
Benchmarking Against Industry Standards
Workload Characterization
Performance Oriented Architecture & Design
Code Optimization
Database Tuning
Performance Testing
Level 1
BASIC
Level 2
ORIENTED
Level 3
OPTIMIZED
Level 4
LEADERSHIP
Key Performance Attributes
(KPAs)
Fig. 1 : Performance Maturity Model
infrastructure
and
network
bandwidth. Performance results
are in accordance with the prevalent
performance standards.
6.Benchmarking against industry
standards / competition
The maturity level of a product is
decided based on assessment for each
of these six KPAs.
Using the model, performance
assessment of a product is done as
follows:
1.
Enlist
product
performance
expectation for each of the KPAs
through
a
pre-assessment
questionnaire.
2.
Calculate weighted average for
each of the KPAs and arrive at
a level specific maturity score.
Feedback is provided to product
development team to further
improve the product’s performance
maturity.
We have used this PMM based
technique for product performance
assessments for about 50+ products.
Usage of a standardized assessment
methodology has helped improve our
products’ performance.
References
1. Evaluating Performance Maturity
Level of an Application. Patent US
9158663 B2. Inventors : Koshy P
Vaidyan, Rajiv Thanawala, Sreejith
Balakrishnan.
n
About the Authors:
Mr. Rajiv Thanawala has played varied roles in his 26 years of IT industry experience. He currently
heads the Product Experience Center of Excellence at Tata Consultancy Services. He can be reached at
[email protected].
Mr. Mohan Jayaramappa, [CSI-01100457] is a senior consultant in Tata Consultancy Services based out of
Bangalore. He heads the Product Trustworthy Centre of Excellence that is responsible for ensuring software
product Performance & Security. He has overall experience of 27 years in the IT industry and has worked in
various positions and technologies. He can be reached at [email protected].
Mr. Sreejith Balakrishnan has 14 years of IT industry experience and works for Tata Consultancy Services,
Kochi. He is part of the Performance Engineering team, in the Product Trustworthy Centre of Excellence, that
is responsible for ensuring Software Performance. He can be reached at [email protected].
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I N N O V AT I O N S I N I T
Real-time Unified Process Dashboard
Mr. Manoj Soman
Sr. Manager - Innovation, Tech Consulting & Solutions, BPS
In today’s fast moving world, right information made available at near real-time in right context would help leadership teams
take right decision at right-time before things swirl out of control.
Context
If you had ever got chance to visit
any operations floor (Business Process
Operations), chances are high that you
would find simiar view there.
Agents
(Individual
processing
business transactions) are processing
transactions following SOP (Standard
Operating Practice) and SMEs (Subject
Matter Expert) are engaged in helping
agents solve specific queries. Agents
are periodically walking to whiteboards kept on floor to write operational
information about transactions being
processed.
MIS reporting teams pull data
from multiple business applications
at the same time send excel trackers
to operations managers for collecting
information about live transaction
being processed by agents. Operations
managers send those trackers to
team leads and team leads send same
to agents over emails. Agents fill up
required information in excel trackers
while processing transactions, send
updated one back to team leads on
email, team leads send same back to
operations managers and then back to
MIS teams.
MIS teams collate all this
information collected from agents
as well as downloaded from multiple
business applications into excel,
massage this information (clean,
cleanse, map, transform, aggregate,
group, rollup etc.) to workout excel
based dashboard which is then shared
with leadership teams which could be at
scheduled time during a day, every day
(EOD) or every week.
By the time leadership teams
(operations and business) discuss
status of operations, “real” picture on
operations floor could be contrasting !
And “contrasting” can have
different flavours here, going from
“not-good” (about to breach SLAs
(Service Level Aggrements) on few
transactions), “bad” (alreay breeched
SLAs on multiple transactions) to “out
of control” (deep red on multiple SLAs
with potential financial loss / penalty) !!
Business Problem
A task or a transaction which
gets executed on Business Operation
(operations) floor is typically a
multi-step task involving multiple IT
systems and multiple stakeholders.
Stakeholders can be service provider,
customer, and customer’s customer.
And transaction could be either orders,
cases, issues, requests, queries etc.
A transaction processing requires
combination of multiple system-tosystem and / or human-to-system
interactions and follows lifecycle
of multiple milestones or statuses
from start to end. Such a complex
combination of interactions lead to
challenges in measuring and tracking
efficiency and effectiveness of business
process.
Business
process
operation
involves working with stringent timelines
governed by SLA contracts. Missed SLA
target could mean delay in processing
which could lead to dissatisfaction to
customer or potential financial penalty.
Hence every bit of time saved is critical
as it could translate to improvement
in customer satisfaction score or gain
monetary benefits. This calls for having
complete control and visibility into
transactions being processed on the
operations floor.
Existing form of dashboards used
on operations floor which involve Excelbased dashboards as well as white
boards do not provide ‘right-time’
visibility as well as doesn’t provide
‘complete lifecycle’ view of transactions
being processed operations team.
This leads to challenges in tracking &
monitoring transaction processing on
operations floor.
This calls for a solution, which
would be automatically & frequently
refresh showing operational information
at right-time as well show complete
38 u
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life-cycle-view of transacations.
Solution
‘BAM Lite (Business Activity
Monitoring)’ helps enable measuring
and
tracking
efficiency
and
effectiveness of business processes.
‘BAM Lite’ Solution
enables
Business Operation as well as
Customer leadership team with a
dashboard with complete visibility in
transaction processing and progress of
their respective milestones with a righttime view as per business requirement.
Solution provides one unified
screen / view (UI – User Interface)
showing process information spanning
across multiple systems, human
actions & milestones / statuses.
Solution provides multiple views to
address operational challenges:
»»
Dashboard View
»»
Traceability View
»»
KPIs (Key Perfornance Indicators)
View
33 Dashboard View
The process maps shown in
dashboard view (figure 1 below), provide
complete visibility of transaction
lifecycle showing all processes, tasks or
milestones through which a transaction
flows from start to end.
33 Traceability View
Traceability view (figure 2 below)
shows ‘Control panel view’ depicting
all transactions being processed by the
team currently. For every transaction,
all milestones across lifecycle of
transactions are shown along with
visual indicators enabling SLA tracking
33 KPIs View
For any process, BPS Service
Provider Operation as well BPS
Customer leadership team is concerned
with monitoring and meeting targets
for operation KPIs. KPIs view (figure 3
below) helps leadership team in tracking
KPIs in near real-time enabling better
control on operations.
www.csi-india.org
INNOVATIONS IN IT
Fig 1 : Dashboard View
Fig 2 : Traceability View
Solution Details
Solution is a web based application
using web sockets for real-time
updates.
Solution leverages BAM feature
of underlying BPM (Business Process
Management) engine for process flows
excluding process execution part and
hence being termed as “BAM Lite” !.
Solution:
Has Server component which
queries BPMN (Business Process
Model & Notation) compliant
process flows to draw process flow
image on presentation layer (User
Interaface)
Has Presentation layer (User
Interface) which renders process
flow images received from server
component along with data
Data is nothing but process instance
counts which are rendered on top
of process flow image showing how
many instances of transactions
for respective process are being

executed currently
Presentation layer is autorefreshed at scheduled frequency
with server component pusing data
to presentation layer using web
sockets
Web sockets approach provides
much better web experience
than standard pooling method
employed where in presentation
layers requests data from server at
scheduled frequency
Process image flows are “pixelperfect” which are drawn from
BPMN compliant process flow
models
Provides hot-pluggable process
flows feature which allows users
to just drop a BPMN compliant
process models to designated
directory
and
then
system
promptly reads process models
to draw “pixel-perfect” process
image and create a dashboard
Fig 3 : KPIs View
programmatically at runtime with
no manual efforts involved for
configuration and coding.
Concluding Thoughts
‘BAM Lite’ would prove to be one
of the effective tool in BPS Service
Provider Operation as well BPS
Customer leadership team’s armor
enabling better control over operations
and improving chances of avoiding
SLA breach and subsequent monetary
penalties!
References
[1]
TCS Patent Filed Application –
4596/MUM/2015 (Ind), 15/068219
(US), 16159608.5 (EPO) – ‘O2A
Dashboard Lite in Telecom BPO
(Business Process Outsourcing)
operations for Process Tracking
& SLA Management’ – Mahesh
Kshirsagar, Manoj Soman, Naresh
Balasubramanian
About the Authors:
Mr. Manoj Soman [Sr. Manager - Innovation, Tech Consulting & Solutions, BPS] is currently working as
Consultant in Technology Consulting team in BPS helping BPS customers identify operational inefficiencies
and evolve automation opportunities using technology solutions. His interests include Cloud Computing,
Virtualization, Big Data and IoT. He can be reached at [email protected]
Memorandum of Understanding
between Computer Society of India and Springer Nature
valid upto 31st December 2020
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the member.
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www.csi-india.org
www.csi-india.org
Book Title:Usability and Human - Computer
Interaction - A Concise Study
Author:
S A Kelkar
ISBN:978-81-203-5162-2
Price:
` 495/Publisher: PHI learning Private Limited, New Delhi
The comprehensive introduction to Usability
engineering and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is one
of the distinctive books with its extensive exposure and
thorough approach in this area. This book is accessible in a
way that it covers the entire usability lifecycle that makes it
useful for students, as well as for anyone who is interested
in learning more about user interfaces.
This book covers many disciplines relevant to the
field of human-computer interaction (HCI) and provides
a comprehensive guide through all of them. Author
addresses both technical and socio-psychological parts
of HCI in understandable manner for both beginners
and professionals in the field. The textbooks on Human
Computer Interaction, technology and applications have not
addressed HCI’s multidisciplinary foundations effectively. In each chapter the focus is on a different scientific
analysis and approach with an identical format. The SWOT
analysis for Indian IT industries and Human-Computer
interactions is given in chapter 1. Chapter 6 demonstrates
many practical examples on how to apply usability principles
in web design, and what is the positive effect on visitors
consequently.
The chapters emphasize on both developmental
processes and techniques involved in HCI. Chapter 9
focuses on the use of sound in interfaces which is the
process to reach out to the maximum number of people with
their design requirements. The chapters includes Interface
Development Process, Interface Design Guidelines as well
as the topics are elaborated with diagrams and flowcharts
that are relevant to learn concepts of HCI, and to give
a foundation in HCI theory, which will help to make the
learning process more instructive. The information required
during development lifecycle on which method to use at
different stages is included, along with thorough information
on usability test and the issues related to universal usability.
The book gives emphasis on methods which can be
implemented immediately by developer, and guide readers
throughout the development lifecycle.
The book was thorough, all statements and facts
were properly supported by footnotes, referencing to an
attached appendix for supplemental information. The
content in all the three appendixes is seen as additional
reference information which is supporting the main material
within the book.
Review by:
Ms. Preeti P. Vaidya
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Engineering,
K K Wagh Institute of Engineering Education & Research,
Nashik, Maharshtra, India
CSI Adhyayan
a tri-monthly publication for students
Articles are invited for July-Sept. 2016 issue of CSI Adhyayan from student members authored as original text. Plagiarism
is strictly prohibited. Besides, the other contents of the magazine shall be Cross word, Brain Teaser, Programming Tips,
News Items related to IT etc.
Please note that CSI Adhyayan is a magazine for student members at large and not a research journal for publishing fullfl edged research papers. Therefore, we expect articles should be written for the Bachelor and Master level students of
Computer Science and IT and other related areas. Include a brief biography of Four to Five lines, indicating CSI Membership
no., and for each author a high resolution photograph.
Please send your article to [email protected].
For any kind of information, contact may be made to Dr. Vipin Tyagi via email id [email protected].
On behalf of CSI Publication Committee
Prof. A. K. Nayak
Chief Editor
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BRAIN TEASER
CrossWord
Durgesh Kumar Mishra
Chairman, CSI Division IV Communications
Professor (CSE) and Director Microsoft Innovation Center, Sri Aurobindo Institute of Technology,
Indore.
Test your knowledge on Robotics
Solution to the crossword with name of first all correct solution provider(s) will appear in the next issue. Send your answer to CSI
Communications at email address [email protected] and cc to [email protected] with subject: Crossword Solution
– CSIC July 2016 Issue.
CLUES
1
ACROSS
1.
2.
3.
7.
Rotational movement of Robot
A circuit board
Robot’s coordinate system
A smooth continuous function to avoid
jerks in motion
8. A speed reducer
9. Robot configuration
10.An adjustable hoisting machine
11.A mechanism used to trigger motion
12.A rotation platform
2
4
3
5
DOWN
6
1. An input device for robot
4. Platform for small-scale robotic
experiments
5. Support for manipulator arm
6. A device which perform energy
transformation
7
8
9
10
Solution for June 2016 Crossword
1
A
U
11
2
O
N
T
O
L
O
G
Y
O
C
H
U
N
4
K
6
O
12
P
5
G
R
U
N
B
I
M
A
G
R
O
N
U
U
A
S
L
M
8
A
DID YOU KNOW?
9
H
A
U
R
I
S
Indian Monsoon Forecast by Robots!!!
To get better Monsoon forecast India and UK jointly started
a project to use underwater robots and overhead aircrafts
in the Bay of Bengal region. The robots will be dropped off
Indian ships to analyze ocean conditions and the aircrafts
will measure atmospheric circulations, and synthesize
data. India’s ministry of earth sciences and UK’s University
of East Anglia (UEA) will work on the project.
P
R
O
T
G
L
T
I
10
N
I
C
S
O
T
Y
P
Y
11
E
L
F
I
U
S
Z
I
M
O
R
P
H
O
L
O
Z
G
Y
N
We are overwhelmed by the response and solutions received
from our enthusiastic readers
Congratulations!
Rashid Sheikh
Associate Professor,
Sri Aurobindo Institute
of Technology, Indore
All nearby Correct answers to May 2016 month’s crossword
received from the following reader: Dr. Sandhya Arora,
Assistant Professor, Cummins College of Engineering for
Women, Pune
Source: http://www.ibtimes.co.in
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www.csi-india.org
FROM CHAPTERS & DIVISIONS
AHMEDABAD CHAPTER
Secretary, Shri Vivek Agrawal – Member (NC), Prof. R. K.
Anand, Shri Ashish Mishra, Shri Rohit Kosta attended the
meeting. The committee planned for various technical and
professional activities under the banner of CSI Jabalpur
Chapter. It was also decided that more number of student’s
branches will be open in the city and membership drive will
be increased. A web page of CSI Jabalpur Chapter will be
developed.
Computer Society of India, Ahmedabad Chapter and
Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry
(FICCI) organised a seminar on “ICT solutions for Digital
and Smart Gujarat” in association with, on Monday, 16th May
2015. Infocomm International (Global ICT Association) was
the partner to the event. Prime objective of the seminar was
to advance the dialogue between various stakeholders with
a view to promote Digital and Smart India Campaigns as well
as support to major ICT driven initiatives of the government
of Gujarat.
CHENNAI CHAPTER
The seminar was addressed by Shri Dhananjay Dwivedi,
IAS, Secretary, Science and Technology Department,
Government of Gujarat, Prof. Rajnikant Patel, Honorary
Director, Graduate School of Smart Cities Development
(GSSCD) Gujarat Technological University, Mr. Jonathan
Seller, Senior Director of Development (Asia/Pacific),
InfoComm International, Mr. Richard Tan, Executive Director,
InfoComm Asia.
Followed by that, a panel discussion on ‘Building Digital
& Smart Gujarat - Emerging partnerships and
business opportunities in ICT’ was organized. The panelists
included Mr. Siraj Siddique, Head – IT, Indian Institute of
Management – Ahmedabad, Mr. Jayesh Solanki, Chairman,
Computer Society of India, Ahmedabad Chapter Mr. Sunil
Shah, Chairman, Gujarat Innovation Society, Mr. Kaushik
Pandya, Founder President, Federation of IT Association of
Gujarat, Mr. Vivek Ogra, Vice Chairman and Director, GESIA
IT Association, Mr. Jonathan Seller, Mr. Shinoj Nair, General
Manager, ICT, GIFT City. With speakers convening from
government and the industry, the seminar brought together
the public and private sectors to further identify solutions
for moving towards a digitally smarter Gujarat.
The seminar was attended by key government officials,
eminent industry leaders, young entrepreneurs and
technical experts. The discussions revolved around ICT
Solutions and Government’s vision for Digital and Smart
Gujarat; Emerging partnerships and business opportunities
in ICT; and increased involvement of Industry and achieving
faster growth.
JABALPUR CHAPTER
A meeting of CSI Jabalpur Chapter was organized on 29th
June 2016. Dr. Maneesh Choubey - Chairman, Shri I. S.
Ruprah - ViceChairman, Dr. Santosh K. Vishwakarma -
The Chennai Chapter of CSI organised a presentation
on “Life Career Fundas : LCF 101” by Mr. Deepak Mirza,
Recipient of President’s “Swarn Kamal” Award on 20th Apr
2016. It was a motivational presentation with a focus on the
Importance of Self-Esteem, a ‘’basic Who-am-I’’ Self-Query,
Work, Instructions and Agreements, Professional Esteem,
Giving ‘’something’’ back. It also dealt with briefly on use of
Checklists, Decision Making, Success-Failure Responses,
Light Existence, and related. The speaker highlighted that
by presenting a certain approach to our Fears, Sins, Guilt
which is related to Imperfections like unworthy actions,
habits, obsessions; it may add value to many of us who fail
to Enjoy and maximize OUR lives, The approach presented
has been remedial. The session may contribute to an
understanding of ‘’OUR’’ preferences and help us enjoy
them.
The Chennai Chapter of CSI organised a presentation on
“Communication Systems in Indian Railways: Today and
Tomorrow” by Mr. R. Baskaran, Group General Manager,
RailTel Corporation of India Ltd, Chennai on 11th May
2016. The speaker said that Indian Railways (IR) uses the
communication systems broadly in the following three
categories. – Operational Communication Systems;
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Administrative communication systems; and Emergency
communication equipment. He added that IR also uses
Networked Passenger Information Systems and continuously
putting a lot of effort in improving the technology to match
the developments and growing user needs and demands.
He mentioned that IR is fast adopting itself to most of
the communication facilities which are getting shifted to
IT based. Emails, Messaging, Social networks such as
Facebook, WhatsApp are being extensively used now. While
ERP is also getting implemented in phases, Internet of
Things (IoT) is likely to be the future for all its operations. The
presentation covered the various technologies which are in
use, challenges faced in implementing and maintaining and
the overall benefits derived by IR through Communication
Systems.
covered what a project manager could do to address this
challenge.
COIMBATORE CHAPTER
A review meet to discuss the activities under execution for
CSI-2016 was held at Hotel Vijay Elanza, Coimbatore on
Sunday, 25 June 2016. The meeting was attended by a large
number of committee members including Chairs of various
committees. The meeting was presided over by Mr. P. R.
Rangaswami, Chair Organizing Committee.
All the Committee chairs gave a detailed presentation on
the activities done so far and plans for the coming months.
Various suggestions were received from members to make
the convention a landmark event. The meeting was followed
by a photo session and lunch.
NASHIK CHAPTER
On 4th Jun 2016, the Chennai Chapter of CSI organised
a programme in which the book “Software Project
Management” authored by Mr. S. Ramanathan, CSI Fellow
and Past Hony. Secretary. Mr. S. Mahalingam, Fellow &
Past President of CSI and Former Chief Financial Officer
and Executive Director of TCS and Non-Executive Chairman,
City Union Bank was the chief guest at the programme and
formally released the book and spoke about the importance
of Software Project management in the execution of
complex and large projects and said that the book written
in a simple language highlights various aspects of the
project management with case studies and review questions
to re-inforce the learning. After the release of the book,
Mr. S. Ramanathan gave a presentation on “Managing
Expectations - Essence of Software Project Management”
in which he said that while the traditional wisdom defines
project management as managing time, cost and resources
to deliver the scope with the desired quality, the experience
shows that customer expectations go beyond these and
thus it is not sufficient if deliverables are fulfilled. He
added that it is also important how it is delivered to meet
customer expectations which bring in intangible parameters
to measure the success of a project. The presentation also
Computer Society of India, Nashik Chapter organized a
program on Cost Effective ERP Solution SAP B1 for SME
Sector on 3rd June, 2016 powered by Edel Tech Pvt. Ltd
at Express Inn, Nashik. Mr. Diwakar Yawalkar welcomed
Mr. Narahari Kulkarni, Edel Tech Pvt Ltd. Program was
conducted for Small & Medium scale industries. It was
very useful to understand SAP Business One. Mr. Mitesh
Gandhi, Western Regional Head SAP India for SAP Business
One and Mr. Rakesh Prasad, Technical Head SAP Business
One, Indian subcontinent have given excellent coverage
on SAP Business One. SAP team demonstrated, “How an
organization can use SAP Business One for improving their
efficiencies and in turn improve their bottom line”. During Q
& A session Mr. Narahari Kulkarni and SAP team addressed
participants questions. Few SAP Business users also shared
their experience.
The program was attended by 120 CEO, IT/EUC individuals,
C-level strategists, CIO, CISO and IT Heads from various
organizations.
Computer Society of India, Nashik Chapter organized a
program on Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA)
Awareness program on 10th June, 2016 in association with
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ISACA, Pune Chapter at Swagat, Kusumagraj Pratishthan,
Nashik.
Mr. Girish Pagare in his introductory speech, explained need
of CISA Program. Mr. Chandrashekhar Dahale felicitated
speaker of the program Dr. Pravin Mulay. Dr. Pravin Mulay is a
Risk Management, IT Governance and Process Professional,
having 40 years of total experience. In his presentation, Dr.
Pravin Mulay covered various topics including importance
of CISA, CISA Job Practice Areas, CISA exam pattern and
study plan. The program attended by industry persons and
students of Institute of Cost & Works Accountants of India
(ICWAI).
College of Engineering) were present in the function.
Computer Society of India, Trivandrum Chapter conducted
a Two Day Workshop on ‘NS 3’ on 22nd and 23rd April
2016 at Mar Baselios College of Engineering & Technology,
Nalanchira in association with Department of Computer
Science, Mar Baselios College of Engineering & Technology.
Prof. T. S. Pradeep Kumar from VIT Chennai was the faculty
of the workshop. The workshop was attended by faculties
and students from different Engineering Colleges.
VELLORE CHAPTER
TRIVANDRUM CHAPTER
The inaugural function of CSI Student branch at Baselios
Mathews II College of Engineering, Sasthamcotta, was held
combined with a Technical Talk on “New & Innovative Ideas
as a part of your Academia” on 19th Feb. 2016.
Mr. Sreekanth P. Krishnan, Chairman, CSI Trivandrum
Chapter inaugurated the student branch. Mr. G Neelakantan,
Immediate past Chairman CSI-Trivandrum Chapter,
delivered a talk on “New & Innovative Ideas as a part of your
Academia”. Dignitaries from the BMCE (Baselios Mathews II
CSI Vellore Chapter organized a one week Faulty
Development Programme on “Latest Trends in Computer
Science, IT and Research Directions “from 13-06-2016 and
18-06-2016 at VIT University. Mr. Charles Simson, Senior
Business Analyst from Antuit India Pvt.Ltd, Bangalore
covered Introduction internet of things, data analytics, data
storage over cloud and statistical tools and applications with
research directions. Around 50 CSI life members attended
the workshop, organized by Prof. G. Jagadeesh and Prof. K.
Govinda.
Kind Attention: Prospective Contributors of CSI Communications
Please note that Cover Themes for forthcoming issues are planned as follows:
• August 2016 - Virtual Reality • Sept 2016 - Medical Image Processing • October 2016 - Bioinformatics
Articles may be submitted in the categories such as: Cover Story, Research Front, Technical Trends and Article. Please send your contributions
before 20 July for August issue. The articles may be long (2500-3000 words maximum) or short (1000-1500 words) and authored in as original
text. Plagiarism is strictly prohibited.
Please note that CSI Communications is a magazine for members at large and not a research journal for publishing full-fl edged research
papers.
Therefore, we expect articles written at the level of general audience of varied member categories. Equations and mathematical expressions
within articles are not recommended and, if absolutely necessary, should be minimum. Include a brief biography of four to six lines, indicating
CSI Membership no., for each author with high resolution author photograph.
Please send your article in MS-Word and/or PDF format to Dr. Vipin Tyagi, Editor, via email id : [email protected] with a copy to csic@
csi-india.org.
(Issued on the behalf of Editorial Board CSI Communications)
Prof. A. K. Nayak
Chief Editor
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FROM STUDENT BRANCHES
REGION-I
REGION-IV
ITS Engineering College, Greater Noida
Silicon Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar
24-5-2016 – Student Branch Inauguration
6-5-2016 to 11-5-2016 - Prof Patnaik, Prof Pattanayak & Prof. Padhy
during one week Workshop on Machine Learning for
Big Data Analysis (MLBDA-16)
REGION-V
Amrita School of Engineering, Bangaluru
K S Institute of Technology, Bengaluru
20-5-2016 – Technical Talk on Behavior Drive Development
16-4-2016 – Guest Lecture on Joy of Learning
Computer Networks
K S Institute of Technology, Bengaluru
Anurag Group of Institutions, Hyderabad
19-3-2016 – participants during workshop on
App Design Prototyping
16-4-2016 – Guest Lecture on Joy of Learning
Computer Networks
Anurag Group of Institutions, Hyderabad
PES Modern College of Engineering, Pune
4 to 7-5-2016 – students during workshop on
Android Application Development
19-3-2016 – during Project Competition
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www.csi-india.org
FROM STUDENT BRANCHES
REGION-VI
REGION-VII
MET BKC Institute of Engineering, Nasik
13-06-2016 to 15-06-2016 – Dr Wani, Principal Felicitating Dr
Sane, RVP-VI during FDP on Internet of Things
11-6-2016 – during one day workshop on How to Crack GRE
Call for Nominations
CSI Young Talent Search in Computer Programming 2016
Selection of teams to represent India at SEARCC (South East Asia Regional Computer Confederation)
International Schools’ Software Competition – 2016
To bring out problem solving and programming talents in school students Computer Society of India conducts a National
Level School Students Software Competition every year. The winners will represent the country in the SEARCC International
Schools’ Software Competitions
Eligibility : It is a team based competition. Each team will consist of 3 students. School Team members must be full-time
students with age of 18 years or under, i.e. born on or after 1st January 1998
Format : The competition will be of two (2) hours duration, consisting of 4 problems using ONE of the Programming
languages, viz., C or C++ or Java.
Entry fee : Rs.300/- per team
IMPORTANT DATES
Last Date for Registration of teams
20th July 2016
First Level Regional Competition a t 21 centres across the country
31st July 2016
National level Final Competition at Chennai
11th September 2016
SEARCC International Schools’ Competition
03rd – 06th November 2016
Competition details and registration form are available at
http://www.csi-india.org/searcc.aspx
Further details, please contact
TM
Education Directorate, National Headquarters
C.I.T. Campus, 4th Cross Road, Taramani, Chennai - 600 113
Phone: +91-44-2254 1102 / 2254 1103 / 2254 2874 | E-mail: [email protected]
Mr. R. K. Vyas
Coordinator
Prof. A. K. Nayak
Hon Secretary
Congratulations!
Prof. M N Hoda, Chairman, Division 1 got elected as Member of IETE governing
body for the year 2016-19. CSI is proud for election of Prof. Hoda.
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CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Call for Proposals from CSI Student Branches to organize
National / Regional / State Level
CSI Student Conventions
during the year 2016-17
Computer Society of India (CSI) organizes National,
Regional, and State level Student Conventions annually,
to enhance the awareness on technological developments
and applications, and foster creative professional
orientations among the academic community. The
Conventions, held at Student Branches, offer excellent
opportunities to the students to manifest their technical
proficiency and prowess through paper presentations,
discussions and extensive interactions with peers and
pioneers.
CSI invites Proposals from Student Branches to conduct
the National/Regional/State Level Student Conventions
to be held during the academic year 2016-17 (April to
March).
Criteria: The proposing Student Branch should be very
active, with a track record of several CSI activities, and be
in good standing through the years 2015-16 and 2016-17.
The proposals for convention will be evaluated, broadly
based on the parameters given below:
a)Number of years of continuous valid Student Branch
at the college (without break)
b) Average student strength over the past three years
c)Number, quality and level of activities at the student
branch
d)Prompt submission of activity reports and financial
accounts
e) Ability to attract good speakers from Industry
f)
Availability of infrastructure and other resources
The Proposal: Interested Student Branches are requested
to send electronic proposals in the prescribed format
with all necessary data, including the information stated
below.
a)
Type of convention proposed:
State level
National/Regional/
b)Proposed dates (at least two days) – please indicate
two sets of dates
c)A statement of case why the SB should be considered
favourably for the proposed event
d)Signed undertaking by the Head of the Institution
to provide all the required support (Document with
scanned signature)
e)
Name and contact details of the coordinatordesignate for the proposed convention
How to send: The Student Branches may send the
proposals in the prescribed format through the respective
Regional Student Co-ordinator and Regional Vice
President who may subsequently forward the proposals
to the Hony. Secretary ([email protected]) and Vice
President ([email protected]), with a copy to Education
Directorate ([email protected]).
Timeline: Interested Student Branches may please send
the proposals with all details through proper channel
as explained above to reach CSI Education Directorate
before August 20, 2016.
Selection: A Committee constituted by CSI, including the
Honorary Secretary and Vice President, will assess the
proposals to select the host institutions.
g) Financial strength and potential
h) Accessibility and other general conditions
Schedule:
Regional & State Student Conventions: To be conducted
before 30th November 2016
National Student Convention: To be conducted after 15th
December 2016 and before 28th February 2017
All the National, Regional & State Student Conventions
are to be completed according to the above schedule.
The CSI Student Convention Manual (Please see http://
www.csi-india.org/convention.aspx)
describes
the
guidelines and norms to conduct the student conventions.
CSI Support: CSI extends partial financial assistance, in
accordance with the availability of budgetary resources,
subject to the approval of the Executive Committee. CSI
also supports the publicity efforts for the Conventions.
Convention Helpline: CSI-Education Directorate shall
be pleased to offer any information or
help on the
convention. Please do contact Mr. Gnanasekaran (email:
[email protected] Mobile: 98403 41902) for any
assistance.
Mr. Sanjay Mohapatra
Vice President
Prof. A. K. Nayak
Hon Secretary
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CSI CALENDAR 2016-17
Sanjay Mohapatra, Vice President, CSI & Chairman, Conf. Committee, Email: [email protected]
Date
Event Details & Contact Information
JULY
22-23, 2016
4th International Conference on Innovations in Computer Science & Engineering Venue: Guru Nanak
Institutions Technical Campus, Ibrahimpatnam, Hyderabad, Website: www.icicse2016.org
Contact : Dr. H. S. Saini, [email protected], Dr. D. D. Sarma, [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected]
AUGUST
18-19, 2016
International Conference on “Internet of Things”, Venue : APS College of Engineering, Bangalore
Contact : [email protected]
SEPTEMBER
16-17, 2016
2016 International Conference on Frontiers of Intelligent Computing: Theory and applications
(FICTA), KIIT University, Bhubneswar. www.fi cta.in
OCTOBER
06-08, 2016
International Conference on “Computational Systems and Information Technology for
Sustainable Solution [CSITSS-2016]” Organized by CSE & ISE & MCA - R.V. College of Engineering,
Bengaluru -560059. www.rvce.edu.in;
Contact : [email protected]; Ph: 080-67178183, 8180;
28-29, 2016
Third International Conference on Computer & Communication Technologies (IC3T - 2016) at Devineni
Venkata Ramana & Dr. Hima Sekhar MIC College of Technology, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India.
http://www.ic3t.mictech.ac.in/
Contact : Dr. S.C. Satapathy, 9000249712, [email protected], Dr. K. Srujan Raju, 91-9246874862,
[email protected] Prof. Vikrant Bhateja, 91-9935483537, [email protected]
NOVEMBER
11-12, 2016
International Conference on Advances in Computing and Data Sciences (ICACDS-2016). Proceedings
by Springer CCIS/LNCS Organized by Krishna Engineering College (KEC), Ghaziabad. http://
icacds2016.krishnacollege.ac.in/
Contact : Dr. Mayank Singh, [email protected]. Mob: 09540201130
National Conference on Smart And Innovative Technologies in Engineering And Sciences (SITES
2016) Gyan Ganga College of Technology, Jabalpur, MP. www.ggct.co.in Contact sites: [email protected]
18-20, 2016
2nd International Conference on Communication Control and Intelligent Systems, at GLA University,
Mathura . www.gla.ac.in/ccis2016 Contact: [email protected]
22-25, 2016
Special session on “Smart and Ubiquitous Computing for Vehicle Navigation Systems” at IEEE
TENCON 2016, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore (http://site.tencon2016.focalevents.sg/)
Contact : Dr. P.K. Gupta [email protected], Prof. Dr. S. K. Singh [email protected]
DECEMBER
08-10, 2016
CSI Annual Convention (CSI-2016): Theme: Digital Connectivity - Social Impact; Organized by CSI
Coimbatore Chapter; Pre-Conference Tutorial on 7th Dec. 2016 Venue: Hotel Le Meridien
Contact : Dr. Ranga Rajagopal, Convener, 9442631004 [email protected]
CeBIT INDIA 2016 – Global Event for Digital Business in association with CSI Venue: BIEC, Bengaluru
www.cebit-india.com
Contact : Mohammed Farooq, [email protected], +91 9004691833
22-24, 2016
Joint International Conference on Swarm, Evolutionary, and Memetic Computing (SEMCCO
2016)- 7th Edition & Fuzzy and Neural Computing (FANCCO 2016)- 6th Edition co-located with 1st
International Conference on Smart Computing and Informatics (SCI-2016). Department of Computer
Science and Engg, ANITS, Visakhapatnam, India. http://anits.edu.in/semfansci2016 Contact: Prof.
Suresh Satapathy, [email protected], Mob.: 9000249712
23-24, 2016
8th Annual IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Communication
Network CICN-2016. Venue : Gyan Ganga Institute of Technology & Sciences, Jabalpur
Contact : Dr. Santosh Vishwakarma [email protected]
FEBRUARY
11-12, 2017
International conference on Data Engineering and Applications-2017 (IDEA-17) at Bhopal (M.P.),
http://www.ideaconference.in
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Registered with Registrar of News Papers for India - RNI 31668/1978
Regd. No. MCN/222/20l5-2017
Posting Date: 10 & 11 every month. Posted at Patrika Channel Mumbai-I
Date of Publication: 10th of every month
INSPIRE. INNOVATE.
MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
51st Annual
Convention of
Computer Society of
India
Digital Connectivity – Social Impact
The theme of the convention aims to draw the attention of
academician, corporates, researchers, government and every
stakeholder to help society navigate the impacts of the shifts to
come. It aims to tap into talent and the passion of people who
are already working on innovative solutions to various issues.
Its objective is to bring out state of the art solutions to
challenges related to Digital Connectivity that can...
Impact the economy
Impact Life style of each citizen
and ensure we build societies that are Happy
Societies to live in, in a Digitally Connected
World!!
Convention Highlights
If undelivered return to :
Samruddhi Venture Park, Unit No.3,
4th floor, MIDC, Andheri (E). Mumbai-400 093
FINAL
CALL
FOR
PAPERS!
Inviting
papers in
1- COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
2- IT FOR SOCIETY
3- SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
4- NETWORK, COMPUTING &
INFORMATION SCIENCE
Authors are invited to submit their original and
unpublished work in the areas including but not
limited to these areas.
Important Dates
- Submission of Manuscript 30th July 2016
- Acceptance notification 15th Sep 2016
- Camera ready paper 25th Sep 2016
Visit
• Selected papers to be
www.csi-2016.org for
published in Springer
more details and to
submit paper
E : [email protected]
CCIS series
• High profile speakers from various
industries and institutes of repute
• Numerous networking opportunities to
convert your ideas into reality
emerging
areas:
Scan to visit website:
www.CSI-2016.org
Contact :
Third floor, Vyshnav Building,
95A, Race course,
Coimbatore 641018.
P : +91 422 2200695
E : [email protected]