Local lad represents India in American IGV Competition

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: A local lad got an opportunity to represent the country in the annual 30th Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition ( IGVC) organised in America last week.

Mohammed Umar Rauf Khan is from the city and pursuing a B.Tech Mechanical course from Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore (VIT)-Vellore.

He and his team of VIT-Vellore made a vehicle and participated in the IGCV competition organised by Oakland University, Detroit, Michigan USA. Talking to this newspaper, Mohammed Umar said that the IGVC offers a hands-on experience that is the very cutting edge of engineering education.

“It encompasses the latest technologies that influence industrial development and taps subjects of high interest to students.

The IGVC this year involves three main challenges- ‘The Self-Drive Challenge’, the ‘Auto-Nav Challenge’ and the ‘Design Competition.’ Undergraduate and graduate students can contribute to the team effort,” he said.

Teams from America, India, Canada and Japan participated in the contest. This IGVC is conducted with co-sponsorship and support from the U.S. Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center, Warren, Michigan, and a consortium of companies from the automotive, robotics and computer industry.

Mohammed Umar and his team ‘AutoZ, participated in the Auto-Nav challenge, and Design Competition. He said that even though they participated for the first time, they qualified for the Auto-Nav (Autonomous Navigation) event.

“We may not have won but we learned a lot and understood we have a lot of room for improvement, and next year we plan to go back even well prepared and hopefully to win,” he said. He said that he is part of a robotics team in the college which works on Autonomous robots and takes part in such competitions.

The team members are all self-taught and learn from our seniors and other free resources on the internet.