The Inter IIT Tech Meet ended its 9th edition on Sunday evening, with IIT Kanpur emerging as the overall winners. The trophy comes back home after a long four years, and in such times that no one could have dreamt of it before. The three-day event was hosted by IIT Guwahati from 26th to 28th March with 11 competitions ranging from Technology to Social Entrepreneurship. 22 Contingents from the IITs attended the event, and IIT Kanpur managed to bag medals at nine events. The events were broadly classified into three categories based on the prior preparation they required: High-Prep, Mid-Prep and Low-Prep events. Teams have been toiling hard for the past month, juggling quizzes, assignments with the problem statements and adjusting to this online preparation mode. We got in touch with the major stakeholders who shared this tasteful victory and legacy of technology at our institute.
In conversation with Mudit Agarwal (Outgoing GenSec)
With his participation in three consecutive Techmeets, Mudit explains how IITK has grown to have students interested in diverse domains and fields. Mudit also talked about how the Inter-IIT events have brought students closer to the industry and motivated them to work on problems with direct connections with industrial bigwigs like ISRO, DRDO, and Bosch. Coming to the challenges and difficulties the contingent and the council faced because of the online paradigm, Mudit said that the online events robbed them of the “rush and thrill” of competing against other IITs. The contingent also faced a communication gap due to the lack of in-person coordination. However, he appreciated the hard work and efforts made by the contingent members. On a closing note, Mudit acknowledged that the online system had posed a lack of ‘hands-on experience’, but he believes that the SnT council has always managed to work out solutions for challenges and find a way to make the best out of the coming year.
In conversation with Soumya Ranjan Dash (Contingent Leader)
As the win for IITK came in after almost four long years, it made the victory all the more special, said Soumya Ranjan Dash, the contingent leader for the Inter IIT Tech Meet 9.0. He further added that though the contingent came in 3rd the last time, the team spirit and hard work displayed by every participant brought us a gold this time around. Soumya candidly praised everyone who worked on their particular problem statements as experts in their respective domains, who were well capable of handling the difficulties that emerged with time. He also lauds how the participants managed to deliberate and work together on a problem amid classes and quizzes. Conclusively, Soumya urged future members to work hard, prove their worth, and further uphold the SnT culture. He then ended his message on an inspiring note – “This gold won by the current contingent should give the incoming team an important position to defend in the coming years.”
Competitions at the event:
In the Bosch Traffic Sign recognition competition, IITK stamped its authority by being the sole IIT to clinch the Gold. Utkarsh Gupta, in a candid conversation, tells us about how the team was a bit anxious after the presentations by other IITs, but the belief and the hard work put in by the IITK team made sure that they won first place by a good margin. The team worked in ML and AI to implement a traffic sign recognition model and were able to host the same on a live website that raised the bar. Utkarsh also hopes that motivated students will look at this year’s problem statement and begin working on relevant projects with the Council in this tenure.
In Bridgei2i’s Automatic Headline and Sentiment Generator, Abhishek Mittal explains how the problem statement involved Natural Language Processing to identify themes of articles and tweets and the underlying sentiments. He mentions that being a high preparation event, the online paradigm caused a few problems with coordination between sub-teams working but at the same, appreciates that the team overcame these problems with diligent efforts and planning and was able to work with a proper plan. He mentions that the online event does not have the same charm as the offline event. He states that this was a positive learning experience and that the team does better next year at the InterIIT.
Anshul Rai from the Drishtee Tech-LED Innovation challenge team from IITK tells us how the problem of social entrepreneurship and sustainability was new. The team worked on a solution to reduce the weight loss of fruits and vegetables incurred during transportation and increase shelf life. He mentions that with his experience of being a part of the contingent last year, the level of competition remained the same this time around. The InterIIT event provides a platform for students to gauge themselves at a national level with students from India’s best colleges.
In DRDO’s Vision-Based Obstacle Avoidance Drone competition, Rohan Baijal from the team talked about how the team faced challenges in the technical domain of autonomous exploration and the lack of available resources research. He appreciates that the team took out time and kept the momentum going right from the start. Rohan also said that the standard of problems is being stepped up every year and that this year was a good experience for the team but hopes that by next year, the team is more experienced in the field and raises the bar for the years to come.
IITK clinched the silver medal in ISRO’s Web-Based Visualisation Tool for Astrosat Observation competition. Som Tambe from the team explains that they used ReactJS and Django to implement the front-end and back-end. He mentions that the pandemic posed logistical as well as communication difficulties for the team. Still, the motivation of working for an ISRO project and representing IITK pushed them to give their best. He mentions that they aim to win comprehensively next time and that interested students should reach out to the relevant seniors and start working on stuff that piques their interest.
In Rutag-NE Agrobot Challenge, the IITK team achieved the silver medal, and Jaagrati Jain from the team explains that the team worked on design an effective robot to help terrace farming techniques for different kinds of seeds using Ploughing, Transplantation and Weed removal modules and made the bot smaller and cheaper to make it more affordable. She also said that the online paradigm caused a problem due to the clash of classes and quizzes for the team members and applauded the team’s dedication and hard work, helping them clinch second place in the competition.
In the Bosch Electric Vehicle Simulation competition, Saksham Gupta from the team talks about how fulfilling an experience was for the section. They explored and learnt many things from scratch and secured the Bronze medal for IITK. He says that Inter-IIT was a lowkey affair in the online scheme of things. The lack of in-person coordination was undoubtedly felt, but he appreciated everyone’s enthusiasm and zeal which helped IITK win.
The Saptang Lab’s Network Security Hackathon was an event in which IITK clinched Gold. In a conversation with Ketan Chaturvedi from the team, he explains how five worked on five different problems based on exploiting bugs in pre-existing software. He mentioned that even though they won the Gold this year, they aim to be the sole IIT to win the gold in the next edition of the TechMeet and become the security hackathon leaders at the InterIIT level.
In a conversation with Rishi Sagar from this year’s Product Folks case study team from IITK, he explained that the problem statement was about a company called ‘Kaching’ and its strategy to bring back ‘word of mouth marketing. The team worked on creating an automated method of implementing the solution and made the most out of the time they had at hand. Despite the lack of in-person interaction, the time found positive collaboration and less fatigue in the coordination for their work. Next year, the team looks forward to grooming interested and enthusiastic students for the case study competition.
The Jaguar Land Rover Damping energy harvesting challenge this year was a new and different kind of problem statement than usual. Soumik Ghosh from the team explained that they came up with two solutions using electromagnetic dampers and thermo-electric couplers but couldn’t win due to some loopholes in the final solution. He suggests that more experience and participation in competitions would help the IITK contingent better face such problems. That motivated and interested students should reach out to seniors for advice and opportunities!
With the QuantInsti Algorithm Trading Challenge this year, Rishabh Batra explained how the problem statement revolved around creating an algorithm for paper-trading in the US markets for five days. The team back-tested their strategy for the solution and worked to create the best possible solution. Rishabh also explained how the platform used for the challenge was relatively new with little documentation, and some connectivity and trade problems came forward as hindrances. He hopes that the IITK contingent gets better next year and aims for the top spot!
In conversation with Utkarsh Gupta (Incoming GenSec)
Recently elected SnT Council GenSec, Utkarsh Gupta, was all praises for the contingent and applauded the efforts made by every member. He mentioned how the lack of in-person collaboration and the bulla sessions made the delegation feel a bit undermotivated about the competition, but as time progressed, the excellence that IITK stands for instilled immense enthusiasm among the delegation resulted in the final feat. On what the Techmeet means to the SnT culture of IITK, Utkarsh aspires to make sure that IITK completes the hat-trick to keep the trophy permanently at home. On learnings from this years’ tech meet, Utkarsh said the council plans to explore new domains better to equip the contingent for diverse problem statements next year. In his final remarks, Utkarsh appreciated everyone who has been a part of the contingent and said, “The team’s unparalleled perception and approach to the problem statements is what SnT at IITK stands for”
After a great stint at this year’s Inter-IIT, Vox Populi congratulates the contingent and other stakeholders and hopes that we can up the bar year on year from here on!
Writing Credits: Anushka Panda, Karan Jeyasankar, Sanika Gumaste, Namgyal Lhamo Dolma, Aryan Pandeya, Akshat Goyal
Design Credits: Vijay Bharadwaj, Devansh Parmar, Raj Varshith
Editors: Ankur Banga, Aditya R. Trivedi
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