Updated on: Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Shaastra, the annual technical festival of IIT Madras, is getting bigger each year with over sixty events, 10,000 registrations, more than 12 million hits on the website and cash prizes of Rs 15 lakh.
Begining on Wednesday, the 12th edition of the five-day festival will feature 14 exhibits showcasing the engineering talent of the institute's students at Tech X; products developed by students from other institutes across the country at Innovation X; a musical performance of a different kind using fascinating instruments during Shaastra Nights; RC cars buzzing around performing stunts in Dirt Storm Show; telescope-making workshops and stargazing sessions; fusion of aeromodelling and robotics at Aerofest; startups including online library-iloveread.in at the C-Tides Expo.
Other highlights will be prototypes developed by IIT- M students at the Centre for Innovation (CFI), the technical hub of the institute. Set up in 2008 with the support of the 1981 batch, the CFI has given students with ideas the opportunity to convert them into products. In 2008, the highlight was an unmanned plane capable of autonomous flight, while 2009 saw the unveiling of Techmet, a novel helmet that uses Bluetooth and GPS technology to send out SOS signals incase of motorbike accidents.
Students started working on this year's Spirit of Engineering projects in January and have readied it for display at Shaastra.