ROURKELA: The National Institute of Technology-Rourkela has secured two research projects under the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) of the Union Ministry of Education.
A total of Rs 1.82 crore has been sanctioned for the projects, each of which are of two-year duration.
With this, the NIT-R will be able to cement high-impact global research engagement.
SPARC is a national initiative aimed at strengthening India’s research ecosystem by promoting structured collaboration between higher education institutions of the country and leading global universities.
It enables joint research, academic exchange, and research capacity building in identified priority areas.
The first project ‘Smart Exoskeletons in Healthcare: Principle and Practices for Developing Scalable Exosuits for Rural Applications’ with sanctioned value of Rs 95.16 lakh is led by associate professor in department of Computer Science and Engineering Anup Nandy as principal investigator (PI) and associate professor Ratnakar Dash as the co-PI.
The project is being implemented in collaboration with the University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA with Prof Mukul Mukherjee as foreign PI and Prof Philippe Malcolm as the co-PI.
It focuses on developing wearable robotic devices, known as exoskeletons, which assist individuals in regaining or improving mobility after illness or injury.
Researchers from both sides would design affordable, scalable and easy-to-use exosuits tailored for elderly individuals and post-stroke patients, particularly in local clinical and rural healthcare contexts.
The wearable systems aim to support lower-limb movement and use smart sensors and artificial intelligence to analyse patient motion and assist in correcting movement patterns during rehabilitation.
This institutional partnership involves joint course work, hands-on design and prototyping workshops, and student and researcher exchanges.
The second project ‘Novel Disruptive Technology: Design and Development of Smart and Sustainable Technology for Agri-Food Systems’ with sanctioned value of Rs 87.24 lakh is led by associate professor in department of Food Process Engineering Madhuresh Dwivedi as PI and Prof Rama Chandra Pradhan as co-PI.
Anubhav Pratap Singh from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada is the foreign PI. The co-PI is Anika Singh affiliated with UBC, Canada and the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Burnaby.
This project aims to develop a simple, rapid and non-destructive technology for assessing the quality and safety of agri-food products, without cutting, cooking or chemically testing them.
Scientists from NIT-R will collaborate with foreign researchers to create a smart sensing system that uses mild electrical signals to evaluate food quality, similar in principle to a medical scan, but applied to food products.
The envisaged technology is expected to make food testing quicker, more reliable and field-deployable and seeks to help improve food safety, reduce wastage and support farmers, food processors and consumers, particularly in resource-limited environments.
The story is reported by Prasanjeet Sarkar of The New Indian Express