Students from ETH Zurich and IITs across India join to complete ‘Nanins’, a robot developed at the Autonomous Systems Lab of ETH Zurich that could help prevent water-quality related diseases.
swissnex India, Autonomous Systems Lab of ETH Zurich, Centre for Innovation of IIT Madras, and Workbench Projects are conducting a robotics design workshop – ‘Robo Revolution 2016’. The workshop will focus on design and development of a navigation and control system for ‘Nanins’ edutainment robots developed at ETH Zurich. Thirty-five participants from IITs across the country will enable Nanins to go deep underwater and collect water quality data while minimizing energy usage.
The Nanins help in measuring water properties, such as dissolved oxygen, reduced oxygen, pH, temperature and conductivity – a cost effective and scalable means of enabling real time 3D mapping of water quality in rivers and lakes, helping in identifying and limiting major sources of water pollution.
This workshop is specially designed to encourage innovative ideas for water quality measurement in an automated way to aid global health challenges in preventing water quality-related diseases.
The workshop will enable the participants to gain:
• Hands-on experience on LabVIEW
• Working on CFD (Computational fluid design) and Aerodynamic design
• Deeper understanding of CAD and modeling
• Integration of water quality sensors and other electronic components
• Diving controller design and implementation
swissnex India conducted a series of activities to promote Swiss excellence in Advance Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in 2015 which included Robo Revolution, a workshop held at Workbench Projected Bangalore, that brought together many robotics enthusiasts from all over India.
This year too, the Robo Revolution workshop will be conducted by two facilitators (Stefan Bertschi and Raghav Khanna) from Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich. ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich) is a science, technology, engineering, mathematics and management university in the city of Zürich, Switzerland, which is consistently ranked among the top universities in the world.
Stefan Bertschi
Engineer / Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich
Stefan Bertschi is working as an engineer at the Autonomous Systems Lab of ETH Zurich since 9 years, where he leads the robotics laboratory, supports the research teams and established a school outreach program. He holds a professional bachelor HF in electronics and a postgraduate Diploma NDS-HF in computer science. He has long years of experience working as a test engineer in civil aeronautical systems (navigation, autopilot) and as an operation manager at a Swiss machine manufacturer. Beside his job he is a passionate mountaineer.
Raghav Khanna
Doctoral student / Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich
Raghav Khanna did his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur and his Masters at ETH Zurich where he was awarded the ETH Medal for building a novel thermal energy storage for solar power during his masters thesis. He is currently a graduate student at the Autonomous Systems Lab under the guidance of Professor Roland Siegwart where he works on using autonomous aerial vehicles and data analysis to map farms and help farmers produce more and better quality crops with less chemical input, as part of the Flourish European Project.
“swissnex India has a pan-India mission to showcase Swiss excellence in education and innovation. By bringing together the expertise of ETH Zurich and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), we hope to witness excellent collaboration that leads to the creation of path-breaking technologies”, said Balz Strasser, CEO of swissnex India and Consul General of Switzerland in Bangalore.
