On the occasion of IEEE week, IEEE NITK held a series of talks, workshops and events to help people understand the benefits of IEEE membership.
The celebrations saw 4 exciting events, with each one being grander than the one before.
IEEE’s CompSoc SIG kicked off the celebration with Hacktoberfest, a 3-day extravaganza that aims to generate awareness about Hacktoberfest by Digital Ocean, a global month-long event that promotes Open Source culture. Hacktoberfest was spread out across 3 days. On day 1, Bhaskar Rao (third year, CSE) and Shivamani (third year, IT) spoke on basics of Git and introduced the crowd to the platform. On the second day, Prof Mohit P Tahiliiani, of CSE Department, NITK and Salman Shah, an NITK Alumnus spoke about their journey in Open Source and made us aware about its benefits. Hacktoberfest ended with Madhuparna Bhowmik, 4th year CSE and Ameya, 3rd year NITK giving a session on advanced topics of Git. The event as a whole served to provide attendees with a solid foundation with which to approach the world of Open Source.
Next, we held a session on Engineering the Future, by SK Ramesh, a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at California State University and the IEEE President-Elect Nominee 2021. He spoke extensively on the plethora of technical challenges that the world will face when it emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the vital role that engineers will play in solving them. He spoke of the fundamental responsibilities of all engineers irrespective of cultural and social divide and how we must work to uplift society. The session ended with an extensive QnA session where he addressed wide-ranging doubts from teamwork and sustainable energy to social issues and graduate studies.
Link: https://youtu.be/Hx-sIwQGeLA
Following this, Diode SIG held a 3-hour long workshop on getting started with Embedded C on AVR Microcontrollers using the Atmel Studio 7. The workshop was opened to the Mangalore Sub Section as well. The speakers in the workshop- Chethan M, Jeet Shah, and Karthik Rao covered introductory topics like digital I/O, timers for waveform generators, and PWM. Some of the topics covered were digital input/output, external interrupts for timers and waveform generators, timers for PWM and ADC, and SPI. As these topics are usually explained with the help of a few LEDs, a microcontroller and other components, they were simulated using the Proteus simulator for better visual understanding. It was an interactive session where the participants wrote their own scripts and asked doubts whenever they found themselves stuck.
While the topics covered in the workshop were by no means, enough to make an engineer field-ready, it just gave the students a glimpse of how various embedded applications in day to day life are driven. The workshop also exposed some of them to a whole new area of electronics engineering, something which they can choose to opt in the future
Bringing the IEEE Week Celebrations to its home stretch, Piston SIG held a 2 hour workshop by Vasista Ayyagari, who is currently pursuing his MEng in Robotics at University of Maryland, USA and was a former SIGHT chair of the IEEE NITK chapter.
The talk started off with an introduction by Shaswatha Bose, executive member at IEEE NITK chapter. Vasista introduced the topic by speaking about the importance of path planning in robotics and its wide range of applications. He thoroughly explained and executed the codes of basic motion algorithms namely A*, RRT and RRT*. He further explained the use of potential fields in autonomous navigation and how it can be implemented. This was carried out along with regular pauses for Q and A sessions. The formal event concluded with the vote of thanks by Shaswatha Bose. The casual event that followed involved Vasista’s robot in Maryland being fired through an online server from Mangalore, by Darren Fernandes, Vice Chair of the Piston SIG. This was well received by the participants.
The event was successful in attracting a large number of enthusiasts from multiple disciplines including robotics, aerospace engineering and automobile engineering. There was continuous interaction with the participants and the workshop received very good feedback.
Link: https://youtu.be/eqgrKEgtBQ4
Overall, people from all SIGs came together to pay their tribute to the wonderful organization of IEEE, whose presence in NITK has helped countless students reap the benefits.
