IIT Bombay inaugurated its three-day annual science and technology festival, called the Techfest 2016 on December 16. This is the twentieth edition of the fest and is based on theme Space Expedition.
The festival will see lectures from reputed personalities, competitions and workshops being held at its Powai campus. It will also include exhibitions from several institutions from around the world.
One such highlight has been reported to be mind-controlled drone by Puzzlebox Orbit, US. This drone can be controlled via neuro-senses of a person. Visitors will be able to operate the drone, the Indian Express reported.
The festival will see morphofunctional drones from Switzerland. This particular drone is said to mimic the actions of bio-creatures, scale versions of launch vehicles and satellites used for space missions of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
Apart from these attractions, the event will also feature an Auto Expo with the best of speed machines — includes both cars and bikes — from the likes of Lamborghini, Audi, Ferrari and others.
There will also be a Techconnect event, which will showcase the research and development activities of the students of IIT Bombay. The event will showcase exhibits that were developed by the students like a formula racing car and an underwater vehicle.
The festival will have a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Conclave, an international summit on the Internet of Things and various robot competitions. LIGO conclave's panel discussion will have Bruce Allen, Director of Max Planck Institute, Archana Pai, Professor, IISER, P Ajith, Professor, ICTS, Rana Adhikari, Professor Caltech and Urjit Yajnik, Professor, IIT Bombay.
There will also be a panel discussion on "Make In India" by the personalities like Nirmala Sitharaman, MoS Commerce and Industry, Ravi Kant, Former MD, Tata Motors, Dr A Velumani, CEO, Thyrocare, Dr D B Phatak and Yaduvendra Mathur, Chairman, EXIM Bank.
The lecture series will include Prof Kaushik Basu, a renowned Indian economist, senior vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank, Jeff Demain, former director of Intel Labs Gordon Gill, Burj Khalifa, Dubai architect and others.
The exhibition will feature Super Advanced Artificial limbs (bionic arms) by Mr Konstantin from Motorica, Russia, Sleepy Camera (smart low power camera) from Switzerland, MKO (India's first companion robot) Hexapod (six legged walking bot) from Russia, Rollkers (first electronic undershoes) from France, Quimesis (IoT integrated Robotics) from Belgium, BB8 (Star Wars robot) from Russia and from satellites from ISRO.
Other attractions include Light Balance-The Hi-Tech neon and LED show by Ukraine's Got Talent finalists. It also has a virtual reality and gaming event in association with Ubisoft.
This is one of the largest science and technology festivals in Asia and has an outreach of over 2500 colleges in the country and more than 500 colleges abroad, the report noted.
