India's budding engineers showcase eco-friendly creativity

Three wheels, eco-friendly designs and lots of creativity and intelligence were on offer as scores of budding engineers from across India got together here for a unique event - Effi-Cycle, an inter-collegiate design-cum-race competition.

Essentially a get-together of young engineers to explore environmental friendly and economical solutions for the day-to-day mobility needs, the three-day just-concluded Effi-Cycle was hosted by the University Institute of Engineering and Technology (UIET) and Panjab University.

An initiative of the Northern Section of SAE India, a non-profit engineering and scientific society dedicated to the advancement of mobility, the event was aimed at providing an opportunity and platform for young engineers to explore the 'Environmental Friendly and Economical' solutions and challenged undergraduate engineering students to conceive, design and fabricate a prototype of a three-wheeler powered by human or electric-hybrid power and capable of seating two people."

"The national event entering into its fourth season witnessed the participation of 209 teams from leading technical institutions from all over the country, out of which 80 have been shortlisted for the main event," said UIET organising team member Ramandeep Kaur. Some of the teams included IIT-Guwahati, IIT-Roorkee, Punjab Engineering College (PEC) University of Technology-Chandigarh, Thapar University-Patiala, BITS-Hyderabad and UIET itself.

"The grand finale was the endurance race of these new creations on a 1.4 km circuit specially prepared at our campus, where finally teams will drive their vehicles for maximum number of laps. The winner was Team Arjuna of (Delhi's) Northern India Engineering College," UIET organising head Prashant Chaudhary told IANS. The winners were richer by Rs.100,000 and a memento."

"The winning vehicle will be engineered to comply with the fundamentals of ergonomics and at the same time being dynamically stable and able to endure tough conditions," Chaudhary added. A lot of hard work had gone into the conceptualization, designing and creation of the vehicle". "It took us almost three months to design and develop our vehicle. It has special features like more safety for drivers, electric power and also better speed," said Prachi Wadhwani from Sri G.S Institute of Technology and Science, Indore.

"This is the first time I am participating in Effi-Cycle. This provides a very challenging platform for all of us," said Joe John of Team Agraganya of Amrita College of Engineering and Technology".

"This is an excellent platform for us to showcase our creativity and innovation and develop leadership skills which help us become industry-ready," said Rahul Sharma of Thapar University.