Who says movies can no longer inspire us? Sometimes, even the cheesiest Bollywood self-indulgence like Aamir Khan’s 3 Idiots can make us feel better about ourselves and act as a combustion engine that propels us to our destiny. Far-fetched, you say? Three plus one non-idiot from M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT) did something they never thought they would, and it could benefit us all.
Although the engine analogy is not quite correct. The engine here is in the heads of these students, they're too environmentally-aware to use fuel as anything but an idea. You see, Pratim Acharjee, Baljeet Singh Matharu, Chandra Pandian and Rishi Ritesh have idea-lized a Green, flying copter.
They did it in four months of trial and error and finally, glorious success. What they have on hand now is a quad-solar helicopter made from scrap material. In laymanspeak, that means the germ of an idea for a future involving flying copters that use the sun to speed them on their way.
“After watching the morning show of Idiots in November last year, we thought of developing a helicopter in no time at all. But what followed was not child's play,” says Pratim Acharjee, an eighth semester student. In the movie, a student develops an unmanned helicopter prototype in tragic circumstances. The Ramaiah friends simply visualised the next step if flying cars had caught the imagination, (so well-done in another movie The Fifth Element); why not flying choppers.
“But the biggest expense in such a scenario was fuel. So we decided to build a helicopter using solar energy,” says Acharjee. The next thing the foursome did was to visit public sector enterprises. “We made rounds requesting guidance but no one took us seriously. So it was a huge task for us to find raw materials,” explains Matharu.
This meant thinking out-of-the-box once again and visiting the City's scrap yards. “We made rounds from Sadar Patrappa (SP) road to Sunday Bazaar. We picked up an aluminium rod for Rs 100, bought broken windows, curtains and found a cross-pipe attachment lying in a drain. The first trial was done by mounting the solar panel over the helicopter and hoping to make it fly. But we couldn't do it. What we needed was to spend time in research and development at a highly sophisticated laboratory. As we were wondering what to do next, we thought of using stored sources of conservation energy,” adds Pandian.
They did it in four months of trial and error and finally, glorious success. What they have on hand now is a quad-solar helicopter made from scrap material. In laymanspeak, that means the germ of an idea for a future involving flying copters that use the sun to speed them on their way.
“After watching the morning show of Idiots in November last year, we thought of developing a helicopter in no time at all. But what followed was not child's play,” says Pratim Acharjee, an eighth semester student. In the movie, a student develops an unmanned helicopter prototype in tragic circumstances. The Ramaiah friends simply visualised the next step if flying cars had caught the imagination, (so well-done in another movie The Fifth Element); why not flying choppers.
“But the biggest expense in such a scenario was fuel. So we decided to build a helicopter using solar energy,” says Acharjee. The next thing the foursome did was to visit public sector enterprises. “We made rounds requesting guidance but no one took us seriously. So it was a huge task for us to find raw materials,” explains Matharu.
This meant thinking out-of-the-box once again and visiting the City's scrap yards. “We made rounds from Sadar Patrappa (SP) road to Sunday Bazaar. We picked up an aluminium rod for Rs 100, bought broken windows, curtains and found a cross-pipe attachment lying in a drain. The first trial was done by mounting the solar panel over the helicopter and hoping to make it fly. But we couldn't do it. What we needed was to spend time in research and development at a highly sophisticated laboratory. As we were wondering what to do next, we thought of using stored sources of conservation energy,” adds Pandian.
How it works
A solar panel mounted on the base of the helicopter provides energy to a solar battery fixed at its corner half assembly. This battery stores solar energy as a form of electrical energy which soon gets converted to mechanical energy. Later, with help of a compound gear assembly mechanism, the energy gets transferred to the propeller blade. Then, the airborne system can be achieved via two parallel co-axial rotor assemblies with the opposite directional spin. “In this way, with the opposite rotation of parallel rotor blades and controlled stability /weight ratio signalled by a microcontroller, the helicopter weighing 3.5 kg has thrust and can fly to a determined height of 12 feet,” says Ritesh. The total cost of the project? Rs 50,000.
The aircraft flew during the mechanical expo in the college recently. Now, the students want to build bigger helicopters for commercial purposes, naturally. All we can say is ....... .... Ahl eez well.
But not if you think this is a one-off; remember what happened to the young man in 3 Idiots who was not given a thrust to fly to whatever height he wished. It might make sense to encourage your own non-idiot who is at this moment pottering in the backyard and making a royal mess. Or if he's going to the airport to watch aircraft fly and furiously making sketches which is what the four friends do in their spare time.
When you think of how ingenuity and caring for the planet have given rise to a creative project like this, you can only wait for the time they make a movie on this lot of students. They'll probably call it The Incredibles 2.
A solar panel mounted on the base of the helicopter provides energy to a solar battery fixed at its corner half assembly. This battery stores solar energy as a form of electrical energy which soon gets converted to mechanical energy. Later, with help of a compound gear assembly mechanism, the energy gets transferred to the propeller blade. Then, the airborne system can be achieved via two parallel co-axial rotor assemblies with the opposite directional spin. “In this way, with the opposite rotation of parallel rotor blades and controlled stability /weight ratio signalled by a microcontroller, the helicopter weighing 3.5 kg has thrust and can fly to a determined height of 12 feet,” says Ritesh. The total cost of the project? Rs 50,000.
The aircraft flew during the mechanical expo in the college recently. Now, the students want to build bigger helicopters for commercial purposes, naturally. All we can say is ....... .... Ahl eez well.
But not if you think this is a one-off; remember what happened to the young man in 3 Idiots who was not given a thrust to fly to whatever height he wished. It might make sense to encourage your own non-idiot who is at this moment pottering in the backyard and making a royal mess. Or if he's going to the airport to watch aircraft fly and furiously making sketches which is what the four friends do in their spare time.
When you think of how ingenuity and caring for the planet have given rise to a creative project like this, you can only wait for the time they make a movie on this lot of students. They'll probably call it The Incredibles 2.
