Mangaluru: Students from Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology have designed and developed an innovative and simple solution to predict the locations of weak points in railway tracks.
There are train accidents happening frequently leading to many tragic deaths and injuries. To address this challenge, a team of bright students from Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology, Yelahanka, Bengaluru, have worked on a technological innovation. Railway tracks are vulnerable to a lot of external forces because of which they tend to degrade over time. These degradations can become cracks which may widen in course of time resulting in train derailments and accidents. Therefore it is of paramount importance that these weak points in the tracks be identified in advance and timely repair work is done.
The team of students used the latest technologies like the Internet of Things (IOT) and Laser-based electronics which worked admirably well. Their solution consists of appropriate sensors, communication and processing, which can be packaged neatly and mounted under the trains. When there is a weak point on the tracks, the solution can give an alert. Since this detection is done before the weak points become cracks, it will help alert other trains. The alerts need to be acted upon by Railway authorities to repair the tracks on time. The students have named their solution PATRIOT, which stands for Predictive Anomaly Tracker for Railways using IOT. The abbreviation is apt because it will be dedicated to Indian Railways. They showcased their solution in the recently concluded nationwide Internet of Things Innovation Challenge 2017, organised by Buoyanci, in partnership with NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies). The problem and solution were extremely well received by the jury, which resulted in them achieving the second prize in the competition in which around 130 teams across India participated. The team is in the process of patenting this innovation. The jury of eminence felt that the solution of such kind is the first-of-its-kind in nature and would definitely help Railways to attend to the problem areas quickly.
The team encountered many challenges–technological, economical, logistic and time constraints. They worked for about a week without a break (24×7) and achieved success. The cost involved to purchase raw materials and build the prototype was around INR 10,000. The team consisted of students (Shashank Shankar, Dilip Sai V, Arjun Kini, Akhil V and Shreyas Dattashivarama), who worked under the guidance of Dr. Raghunandan, Professor, Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology, Bengaluru. This is a humble tribute to Bharat Ratna Sir M Visvesvaraya, on his birthday, which is celebrated as Engineer’s Day.
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