PESIT Students to present design for a Sustainable Urban Transport for 2030 in Vancouver Global Forum of PACE

Car that self-maneuvers on Indian roads gives user complete freedom from driving.

Bangalore: The Mechanical engineering students from PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore (PESIT) are all set to present their design for a Sustainable Urban Transport for 2030 in Vancouver Global Forum of PACE (Partners in Advanced Collaborative Engineering). PACE is a corporate initiative between GM, Autodesk, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Siemens, with contributions from companies like Altair Engineering, 3D Connexion and MSC Software, among others.

The main highlight of the project is the concept of autonomous driving, wherein the car can self-maneuver through Indian roads and give the user complete freedom from driving. Various features like 'in place turning', drive by wire, steer by wire, interactive GPS frontal display etc are unique features of the car.

The PACE project statement is 'To design and engineer a Sustainable Urban Transport (SUT) solution for a specific urban area (city) for the year 2030.' The PACE Institutes world over have been split into seven teams, with each team consisting of one design institute and four engineering institutes. These seven teams will compete against each other in the final PACE Annual Global Forum, where the best idea will be chosen by an elite panel of judges based on various parameters like design ingenuity, product feasibility, collaborative skills and overall functionality.

Among the seven teams, PESIT is heading team number three. While PESIT chose to design the car's propulsion, energy and steering systems; SJCE, Mysore another team member was in charge of the networking integration and the HVAC. Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico was given charge of the suspension and braking systems. Michigan Technological University, U.S.A. handled the electronics and the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) of the car. And finally, National Institute of Design, Ahmadabad, being Team three's design institute was in charge of the actual design of the car which includes exterior body and the interiors features.

This project calls for every team to have a complete independent design of their own. Hence, the overall design of the car was split up into various subsystems and each institute was assigned the task of the complete design and documentation of their subsystem.

All seven final designs will be presented at the PACE Annual Global Forum which is scheduled to be held from July 27th to July 30th, 2011 at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Apart from the SUT project, students involved in the PACE project are given an opportunity to present their individual technical papers at the same Forum. An abstract must be sent to the PACE office for scrutiny, and upon approval, students are given a platform to present their ideas to a global audience of peers and experts alike.

"This is an excellent opportunity for these future engineers to gain exposure on a global level, interact with industry experts and to showcase their technical skills to the world. PES Institute of Technology has had a long running partnership with PACE, since March 2007, when PESIT became India's first PACE Institute. Since then, PESIT has participated in three different PACE projects, where PESIT students have collaborated with students from other PACE institutes all across the world, to bring out the best possible results" said Prof. Jawahar.D, Director, PES Institutions.

This year, two technical papers written by PESIT students, have been approved for presentation at the Annual Forum. PESIT's PACE team comprises of six students, Viswanath Meenakshisundaram, Puneeth K B, Vishwas Bolanthur Pai, Royston Fernandes, Varun Balkrishna Rao and Shrutakakeerti Mallikarjun Vagishwari. The Project is guided by Prof Satish SV, Mechanical Engineering Department, PESIT.

"The participating teams encountered many difficulties as the project progressed. The biggest of them was collaboration with other institutes in the team. Conflicting schedules and dissimilar timelines initially caused problems in communication. But teams soon learnt to adapt and figure out a schedule that was compatible to all, and hence overcame the initial hurdles of communication" said Prof Satish SV, Mechanical Engineering Department, PESIT and Regional Leader.