Makers summer boot camp exhibition held today at IIT Delhi

New Delhi: 25 school students from different parts of the country displayed prototypes built by them here at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi on Friday. The workshop was organised by the institute as the participants completed a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) summer boot camp 'Change.Makers', a five-weeks long engagement where the students were introduced to state-of-the-art technology and necessary training to build upon their ideas for each innovation.

The school students received valuable guidance from IIT Delhi faculty and student mentors and used facilities available at the Makerspace, a DIY Central Research Facility at IIT Delhi, to convert their impactful ideas to reality. Professor Jay Dhariwal, faculty at IIT Delhi's Department of Design, was coordinator for the Change.Makers boot camp.

School students, from Class 10 to Class 12, were selected by the institute to participate in the summer camp, and in the first week were placed in small teams to brainstorm their ideas amongst each other. Based on the problem statements, each team submitted their idea for the innovation. During the second week of the program, the students were taught project relevant fabrication skills at the Makerspace.

The students built and refined the functional prototypes of their electro-mechanical projects under the mentorship of the Institute faculty and students in the third and the fourth weeks. Each team was given a budget of Rs. 20,000 to build their prototypes. However, each team managed to fabricate their innovation within Rs. 5000 to Rs. 10,000. The participants said that the motivation to build each innovation was not just to address real-time societal problems, but also offer technological solutions at an affordable rate.

The nine student team projects were about rehabilitation exercise monitoring, automating reuse of R.O. filtered water, aeroponics, trekker safety, quadruped terrain mapping robot, avoiding drowsiness in drivers, stretcher convertible seat in vehicles, real time text to braille translator and a rolling robot.

Speaking about the summer boot camp, Prof Rangan Banerjee, Director, IIT Delhi said, "It was fascinating to see the enthusiasm, ideas and initiative of the young school students. We hope to enthuse school children to learn by doing and solving societal problems."

During the boot camp, the students were also given tours of different research labs in the institute where they got to interact with leading researchers in the sciences and technology disciplines.

Speaking to Hans India, school students Rishabh Raj and Jai Ansh Bindra, both in Class 12, said, "The experience has been something to cherish for the rest of our lives. In a very short span we learnt the mechanics and the real-time applications of the prototypes. We received both encouraging feedback and some criticism but we take this in the utmost positive spirit. Only a handful of us were selected to be a part of this bootcamp, so, this just feels like an incredible learning opportunity."

Another group of students, who built the prototype EPIC, said that the month-long programme was not just to unlock the innovation potential but also to learn how to work as a team, get guidance from the faculty members and work on an innovation that can be taken to the market.