Students from IIT Kharagpur developing in-house drones with indigenous hardware and software

  18 Oct 2016 , 12:44

A group of students at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur is developing drones using indigenous hardware and software, officials said on Monday.

The drones, being developed under the institute’s Aerial Robotics Kharagpur (ARK) initiative, are being given shape at the Centre for Excellence in Robotics, funded by the Sponsored Research & Industrial Consultancy (SRIC) facility of the Institute.

The Centre has received funding from the Institute to the extent of Rs 5 crores for 12 projects.

“Under the ARK initiative, drones are being developed, which would be capable of autonomous flight, localisation in GPS-denied environments, and tracking and interacting with mobile ground robots as well as other drones, and much more,” said Somesh Kumar of the Department of Mathematics, who is heading the initiative.

The ARK initiative aims to develop a flexible aerial robotics framework, which can be easily used to control aerial vehicles and eventually move to

Why the university of the future will have no classrooms, no lectures, and lots of tech

By Alison DeNisco  | October 3, 2016, 11:48 AM PST

Former MIT dean Christine Ortiz is building a radical nonprofit research institution focused on the intersection of technology and humanity, to increase college access for underprivileged students.

Imagine a university without classrooms, lectures, disciplinary departments, or majors.

Such is the goal of Dr. Christine Ortiz, former dean for graduate education at MIT, who is using technology to build a new kind of residential research institution from the ground up. At IdeaFestival 2016, Ortiz explained that universities are not keeping up with technology advances, or adequately preparing students for life in the 21st century. She is laying out a plan to change that.

"Technology is accelerating, and modernization and expansion of the higher education system is desperately needed," Ortiz said. "Our higher education system is still stuck in the Middle Ages."

Our current university system has not changed significantly in over 1000 years, Ortiz said. So she and her colleagues are building a nonprofit university that:

• focuses on the transdisciplinary interface between