“Innovation is the key and innovative minds are the real products from engineering colleges,” said Dinesh Tyagi, Chairman, SAENIS and Director, ICAT, during the valedictory session and felicitation ceremony of Motion In Control-Vehicle Dynamics Conference and Autonom India 2021 held in Gurugram, Haryana.
He continued that nothing can work without engineering, and science is the backbone of engineering, while innovation is the key that the startups in India are driving.
In November 2021, SAENIS commenced the first edition of Motion In Control with the two-day track event held at the ICAT, Manesar centre.
The event was organised in association with Mobility Outlook, and the conference is supported by iCAT and Maruti Suzuki.
Curated for young engineering, R&D professionals from OEMs and supplier, the track days were followed by four days of technical webinars, termed as Autonom India 2021 which saw valuable inputs from various industry leaders including CV Raman, CTO, Maruti Suzuki India, Jayanta Deb, Chief Technology Officer, MG Motors, Dr Tapan Sahoo, Executive Director, Maruti Suzuki India and Vivek Jakhmola, President, JBM Group among others.
The aim of the event was to Search For Best Autonomous 4W 4-seater EV For Urban Mobility through the following objectives:
To generate a minimum of 10 different typical unsafe Indian driving scenarios with all relevant driving objects.
To generate ten edge cases that are difficult for a conventional ADAS system to function in Indian driving conditions.
To create an application of the most relevant ADAS sensors to ensure object detection and collision warning/avoidance in the identified unsafe driving scenarios.
The jury provided the participants with a common EV model, while the focus was on sensor development, writing algorithms, scenario generation, and the concept that will work in these Indian scenarios.
The competition was divided into four rounds: scenario generation, first elimination, second elimination, and finals.
Anup Kacker, Executive Director, SAENIS, noted that Autonom India was the first flagship autonomous vehicle event and the longest vehicle dynamic event ever. He confirmed that the event got 838 registered from various colleges across India. “We see it as a reflection that all the members want to learn new things,” he added.
The winners for Stage one part one were Team Aces from KIET Group Of Institutions, followed by Team Turing from Shiv Nadar University and Team Macchina from Shiv Nadar University.
While winners for stage one, part two included Team Aces followed by Team Macchina and Team Improvisers from Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur.
For the final round, Team Improvisers were titled the winner, while Team Inferno RACING from Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, stood second, followed by Team Tachyons from Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur.
Addressing the winner, Raman noted that experiential learning is the real way of learning.
S Ramanathan, Vice Chairman – Technical, SAENIS and Managing Director, ATS, said that the theme for Motion In Control 2021 was to introduce vehicle dynamics, while Autonom India 2021 shed light on vehicle dynamics through real-life scenarios.
He continued that the organisation has already started preparing for the upcoming season, and the next season will feature driver-in-the-loop and physical stimulation along with the current mandates.
IV Rao, Ex-Chairman, SAENIS, opined that vehicle dynamics is one of the most important aspects of vehicle design and that SAEINDIA should take more steps to expose engineering students to the automobile industry requirements.