As many as 500 students hailing from small towns and middle to low-income backgrounds might be offered summer internships by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras Research Park (IITMRP). At least that's the plan for these students who will be from Southern India next year onwards, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.

In a first-of-its-kind opportunity, as many as 100 students were offered the chance of summer internship by IITMRP from May 15 onwards. The students, who came from various colleges, were first split into two teams. Then, they proceeded to work on two projects for the duration of 75 days and in the process, were given the support required from project leads and faculty members of the research park

Over the coming 20 years, garnering the support of the industry, the institute aims to work on 100 technological challenges, shared Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala. "This internship aims for something like this. Otherwise, Make in India efforts will not be useful," he said, adding honing the skills of youth from humble backgrounds is the need of the hour.

On July 22, Friday, the research park displayed two projects that the interns worked on. 

One is a wheelchair vehicle, a working prototype of it, that has localisation, motor control, real-time sensing and routing, LIDAR, navigation sensors, wheel encoders and speech-to-text and text-to-speech converters. The other project is a model of grid-based pods which is half the size of auto rickshaws for speedy and eco-friendly transportation. This transport system is named High-throughput Autonomous, Sustainable Human/Goods Transportation for India's next Century (HASHTIC).