Engineering students from city emerge victorious at NASA's event

Students from SVKM's NMIMS Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management and Engineering in Vile Parle brought laurels to the country by bagging two awards — System Safety and Best Design Report — along with a prize money of $250 at NASA's 3rd Human Human Exploration Rover Challenge. The competition was held at US Space and Rocket Centre, Huntsville, Alabama, on April 8 and 9.

The team named Technovators — comprising Mit Vaidya, Ishan Sonavane, Mihir Joshi, Ravi Malladi, Isha Tawde and Kriti Singh — had to design a human-powered four-wheeler, which can smoothly run on the surface of Mars.

They were guided by Professor Sawankumar Naik. The competition saw as many as 99 teams from across the globe.

Talking about their achievement, Vaidya, who was the team leader, said: "In this competition, we had to design a rover that is a four-wheeler human-powered vehicle and can run smoothly on the surface of Mars. A 750m long pathway was constructed with 10-12 obstacles with the surface similar to Mars. We had to complete the race in the lowest possible time."

He added: "Our rover consisted of two aspects, one was the mechanical system which ensured that the two drivers can drive the rover smoothly on a stimulated Martian surface and other was the electronic system which can monitor the environmental condition of the rover's surroundings. Some mechanical aspects such as steering system, chassis, suspension and brakes have been designed such that they are innovative yet simple and safe. The major aspect of the rover were the wheels, as per the rules of NASA, tires with air are not allowed, so we came up with an innovative idea of getting the wheels 3D printed and these technique was appreciated by all the NASA scientists."