Researchers at IISc and Wipro Team up for Autonomous Car for Indian Conditions by Mar'22

Scientists and researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and IT major Wipro Ltd have joined hands to create an autonomous, driver-less car for Indian conditions that has chaotic conditions including potholes, cattles, 'dearly' cows and everything in between. To recall,  in last month Wipro had announced a strategic partnership with IISc to conduct advanced applied research in autonomous systems, robotics and 5G space.

Dr Ramachandra Budihal, Wipro’s head for AI, autonomous systems and robotics, is leading the work to build the car at the IISc campus with a team of 18 engineers.

Key investigators in the initiative, Prof A G Ramakrishnan from the department of electrical engineering at IISc said if we have an autonomous vehicle in India with conditions like-- humans, cycles, autos going--it has to take care of all these factors, plus the zero infrastructure, the potholes and the fact that everything is random.

Professors from six IISc departments that includes aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, electrical communication engineering, electronic systems engineering, electronic design and technology, computer science and automation are involved in the project, The Indian Express reported.

[caption id="attachment_135198" align="aligncenter" width="759"] The car being used for data collection in the project[/caption]

With a plan to have about 28 sensors on the autonomous car, researchers have been using a car equipped with multiple sensors to collect raw data on aspects of navigating the roads in Bengaluru and have selectively picked out around 100 hours of data, out of nearly 1000 hours collected in the last 6 months, to build algorithms and systems for the driverless car.

“We are working on some cutting edge algorithms for Indian conditions. Earlier whatever we worked on was user data from Europe and America but we want to do something for India. We cannot use the systems that we built for the other data sets because the conditions here are unique," said Dr Ramachandra Budihal.

With a targeted rollout date of March 2020, the collaboration for driverless car is an extension of a nearly 3-year effort at Wipro to build an autonomous car using data for roads in Europe and the US.

In addition the collaboration is also an effort to take IISc and Wipro to the frontiers of new technology -- automation, robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and neuromorphic systems.

According to a year 2017 survey by Intel, Autonomous vehicles will most likely be the single greatest opportunity for the creation of value and wealth during the 21st Century, with the self-driving vehicles industry growing on to become a $7 trillion industry by 2050 making it one of the single largest industry, globally.

Over the past six months, investigators have been using a car equipped with multiple sensors to collect raw data on aspects of navigating the roads in Bengaluru and have culled out around 100 hours of data, out of nearly 1000 hours collected, to build algorithms and systems for the driverless car.

The plan is to have about 28 sensors on the autonomous car, say the scientists.

“The kind of data the sensors gather and the range it captures is unique for the Indian conditions. The rate of change, the number of events that happen per second is far higher than what is needed any where else. The number of events that take place per second is several and the latency from one event to the next is very small so you have to program. Video, radar, sensors are all being used to gather data,’’ Budihal said.

One of the key challenges in building a driverless car for Indian road conditions is the amount of processing power that will be needed on board the car to process the enormous amount of data coming in from the road environment, say the scientists involved in the project.

“The processing power needed for this data is far in excess of what is seen in more organised environments,’’ said Prof Debasish Ghose of IISc’s aerospace engineering department.

Other Autonomous Car Projects in India

In July 2017, software giant Infosys had unveiled its very own self-driving vehicle, a ‘driverless’ cart, which has been indigenously developed by Infosys at its Mysore centre and was showcased by the-then Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka.

In the same year, Delhi-based defence IoT startup CRON Systems had announced that it is working to develop the prototype of fully-functional driverless truck this year to help Indian army to deal in hostile locations.

In June this year, Indian cab-hailing firm Ola has set up an advance technology center in Silicon Valley of the U.S to develop technologies related to electric/ connected and autonomous vehicles.

Top featured Image  by Aatur Harsh

Nissan to Hire 550 Tech Pros for its Digital R&D Hub in Kerala for Electric and Driver-less Cars

Japan's automobile major Nissan Motors will open its global digital Research & Development hub for autonomous/driver-less cars at Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram of Kerala and for same the company would hire about 550 technology professionals by March 2019.

IndianWeb2.com first reported about Nissan's R&D hub in June this year. The Hub, which is focused on innovation in automated and electronic vehicles will be shared by the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, a strategic partnership between French and Japanese manufacturers.

According to Tony Thomas, Corporate VP & CIO of Nissan Motor Corp, "Hiring is on for the cream of innovation talent, as this is not a global offshore centre, but a global team."

The carmaker has already signed up 350-plus professionals in domains such as software development, UI/UX, big data, analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT). The 25,000-sq ft facility at Technopark Phase III can accommodate 200 more engineers and innovative brains, Thomas said.

Notably, since July this year, these 350-odd new recruits hired by Nissan for its first Global Digital Centre in India were working at the Infosys campus in Thiruvananthapuram, as Infosys had offered its office space Nissan Digital Hub project till the new facility was set up.

In last couple of years, Kerala has had inked several partnership and MoUs with Tech firms in India as well as abroad. Last MOnth, aircraft maker Airbus Group has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Kerala state government for setting up BizLab Innovation Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.

In March this year, the state government had tied up with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for a space tech park and incubator for startups in space technology. Called as 'ISRO-Space Technology Incubation Center (S-TIC)', the space park will be up and running in June next year.

Source - Financial Express

[Top Image - Guardian.ng]

Huawei To Showcase World's 1st Smartphone-Driven Car This Month

China-based tech giant Huawei has extended its artificial intelligence (AI) interests into the realm of driverless vehicles, announcing on Thursday that it has used an AI-powered smartphone to drive a car, reports BGR.

Under its RoadReader project, Huawei has unveiled a technology that uses AI-enabled smartphone to drive a car that can not only identify objects on the road but take smart decisions to avoid collisions or hitting someone.

Huawei will showcase its “RoadReader” project at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain on February 26-27.

In a video released (see below) by the Huawei, the driverless Porsche Panamera is controlled by Huawei’s flagship smartphone “Mate 10 Pro”, that can “understand its surroundings”.



Huawei first used this automatic object-recognition AI capabilities in its Mate 10 Pro for in order to improve photography of the smartphone. Later, Huawei said that this technology can be reused for driverless-cars instead of relying on a third-party purpose-built chip.

"Unlike other driverless cars, which simply detect obstacles, Huawei has transformed a Porsche Panamera into a driverless vehicle that doesn't just see, but crucially understands its surroundings," the Chinese tech giant said.

“Our smartphone is already outstanding at object recognition. We wanted to see if in a short space of time we could teach it to not only drive a car, but to use its AI capabilities to see certain objects, and be taught to avoid them,” said Andrew Garrihy, Chief Marketing Officer at Huawei Europe.

According to ZDNet, Huawei's AI push also saw it sign a strategic agreement with Chinese search engine giant Baidu in December to build an open mobile AI ecosystem that covers platforms, technology, internet services, and content ecosystems.

In India, Huawei first brought its Artificial Intelligence capabilities when it launched its AI-enabled smartphone Honor View 10, in January this year.

Earlier in April 2017, Huawei partnered with Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) India for digitalization of government schools in Telangana state, under its Daksha CSR program.

In July 2015, Alibaba too unveiled its driverless internet connected car called OS’Car RX5 and comparing it to Huawei's smartphone-enabled car it has capability to identify the driver by their smartwatch instead.

To recall, India's homegrown software giant Infosys has also proven that innovation and India can go very well together when the company unveiled its very own self-driving vehicle, a ‘driverless’ cart, in July 2017.

According to a report, autonomous vehicles industry is going to be world's single largest industry, not soon, but by the year 2050, one can expect the industry to explode to the tunes of a whopping $7 trillion.

Top Image Via - coolest-hacks.com

Autonomous Vehicles May Be The World's Single Largest Industry By 2050

Autonomous vehicles industry is going to be big, not soon, but by the year 2050, one can expect the industry to explode to the tunes of a whopping $7 trillion.

According to a recent survey done by Strategy Analytics for Intel, Autonomous vehicles will most likely be the single greatest opportunity for the creation of value and wealth during the 21st Century, with the self-driving vehicles industry growing on to become a $7 trillion industry by 2050 making it one of the single largest industry, globally.

Considering companies like Uber, Lyft and Google's Waymo are already much ahead in the driverless cars race with Waymo even claiming to have completed over 3 million miles already, the $7 trillion figure isn't that hard to digest. The race has in fact become so intense that the players have already started clinging in each other claws to get ahead. Earlier this year, Uber was sued for allegedly stealing proprietary information regarding self-driving cars from Alphabet’s Waymo. In addition to these aforementioned big players, there are many other firms like Nutonomy, Skymind, Torc Robotics, Mentor and Lvl5 who all want a piece of what is expected to be one of the most disruptive innovations of the last two centuries.

Autonomous vehicles aren't like any another invention. They're the need of the future. As of today, Automobile manufacturing industry employs over 50 million people and produces nearly a whopping 100 million vehicles each year. It is almost large enough to represent the equivalent of the world's sixth largest economy. However, these huge numbers are still not capable of catering to the needs of a population nearing the 10 billion people mark. Hence, there's needs to be a change in vehicle infrastructure we have today and autonomous vehicles can be that change. In addition to adding more driving years to the elderly, autonomous vehicles can also make a positive difference in pollution and climate change caused by vehicles. Their efficiency in terms of their ability to communicate with each other and infrastructure can eliminate traffic congestion and the need for street lights.

Not only will the acceptance of autonomous vehicles change the way we travel, but it will also have a massive impact on the way we live. According to experts, once we start relying on autonomous vehicles and become mentally strong enough to give them charge of our driving seat, while we enjoy the ride on a passenger seat, it is possibly going to be a watershed moment for AI's acceptance.

The study done for Intel is in sync with an earlier one done by Boston Consulting Group where it predicted that the global autonomous cars market will be worth a whopping $42 billion by 2025 and a jaw-dropping $77 billion by 2035. According to it, a quarter of all cars sold could be autonomous vehicles by then.

Unfortunately though, India won't be a major part of these figures as the Indian government for now isn't open to driverless cars as according to them, it will result in loss of jobs, something which goes against their ideology. Instead, they are more into promoting the trend of electric cars. Recently, India’s power minister Piyush Goyal announced that the government is aiming to have an all electric-car fleet on Indian roads by the year 2030.

Autonomous Vehicles May Be The World's Single Largest Industry By 2050

Autonomous vehicles industry is going to be big, not soon, but by the year 2050, one can expect the industry to explode to the tunes of a whopping $7 trillion.

According to a recent survey done by Strategy Analytics for Intel, Autonomous vehicles will most likely be the single greatest opportunity for the creation of value and wealth during the 21st Century, with the self-driving vehicles industry growing on to become a $7 trillion industry by 2050 making it one of the single largest industry, globally.

Considering companies like Uber, Lyft and Google's Waymo are already much ahead in the driverless cars race with Waymo even claiming to have completed over 3 million miles already, the $7 trillion figure isn't that hard to digest. The race has in fact become so intense that the players have already started clinging in each other claws to get ahead. Earlier this year, Uber was sued for allegedly stealing proprietary information regarding self-driving cars from Alphabet’s Waymo. In addition to these aforementioned big players, there are many other firms like Nutonomy, Skymind, Torc Robotics, Mentor and Lvl5 who all want a piece of what is expected to be one of the most disruptive innovations of the last two centuries.

Autonomous vehicles aren't like any another invention. They're the need of the future. As of today, Automobile manufacturing industry employs over 50 million people and produces nearly a whopping 100 million vehicles each year. It is almost large enough to represent the equivalent of the world's sixth largest economy. However, these huge numbers are still not capable of catering to the needs of a population nearing the 10 billion people mark. Hence, there's needs to be a change in vehicle infrastructure we have today and autonomous vehicles can be that change. In addition to adding more driving years to the elderly, autonomous vehicles can also make a positive difference in pollution and climate change caused by vehicles. Their efficiency in terms of their ability to communicate with each other and infrastructure can eliminate traffic congestion and the need for street lights.

Not only will the acceptance of autonomous vehicles change the way we travel, but it will also have a massive impact on the way we live. According to experts, once we start relying on autonomous vehicles and become mentally strong enough to give them charge of our driving seat, while we enjoy the ride on a passenger seat, it is possibly going to be a watershed moment for AI's acceptance.

The study done for Intel is in sync with an earlier one done by Boston Consulting Group where it predicted that the global autonomous cars market will be worth a whopping $42 billion by 2025 and a jaw-dropping $77 billion by 2035. According to it, a quarter of all cars sold could be autonomous vehicles by then.

Unfortunately though, India won't be a major part of these figures as the Indian government for now isn't open to driverless cars as according to them, it will result in loss of jobs, something which goes against their ideology. Instead, they are more into promoting the trend of electric cars. Recently, India’s power minister Piyush Goyal announced that the government is aiming to have an all electric-car fleet on Indian roads by the year 2030.

Autonomous Cars Will Not Be Allowed In India At The Cost Of Jobs, Says India's Road Transport Minister

If you were expecting to ride a driverless car in India anytime soon, then your expectation is most likely to be never fulfilled, at least till the time the Modi government is at the centre. Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari recently addressed the media and made it clear that the government won't be allowing driverless cars in the South Asian country as they're not interested in promoting any technology or policy that has a potential of making a large number of hardworking people jobless.

He said, “No driverless cars will be allowed in India. The government is not going to promote any technology or policy that will make people jobless."

Backing his statement with facts, Gadkari revealed that as of today India is running on a shortage of 2.2 million drivers. He further added that driving skills have a potential of creating employment for a whopping five million people in the second-largest population on Earth. Hence, the government isn't in favour of erasing these high employment numbers by green lighting driverless cars.

“I saw in Sweden a 70-year-old man was driving a taxi. There (Western countries), they have less people. Here, we have more people and they need jobs. Driverless cars will take away those jobs. I am certain on this issue,” he said.

Gadkari also gave the example of how famous Cab aggregators in the country like Ola and Uber are already making big bucks by taking advantage of the driving talent pool of our country, but if they think that they can make even more money by bringing in driverless cars in the country and rendering Indians unemployed, the government won't let the situation go so far.

Recently, a survey found out that there is a 50% chance that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will surpass human intelligence in all areas within a period of about 45 years. The study conducted by researcher Katja Grace at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and a team involved surveying a total of 1,634 artificial intelligence researchers from all around the world.

The main aim of Grace's survey was to find out about when exactly do the AI experts believe that intelligent machines and the AI that power them will beat human intelligence in a number of different contexts.

The survey results shows that experts believes that within the next decade, AI has the capability of outrunning human beings in tasks like translating languages (by 2024), writing high school essays (by 2026), and driving trucks (by 2027).

According to a study done by Boston Consulting Group, the global autonomous cars market is expected to be worth a whopping $42 billion by 2025 and a jaw-dropping $77 billion by 2035. According to it, a quarter of all cars sold could be autonomous vehicles by then. But, it seems, India won't be a major part of these figures.

While the government isn't open to driverless cars for now, it is more than promoting the trend of electric cars. Recently, India’s power minister Piyush Goyal announced that the government is aiming to have an all electric-car fleet on Indian roads by the year 2030.

Discussing the plan of action for making the 2030 aim possible, Goyal said that the government could initially handhold the electric vehicle industry for 2-3 years and help it stabilise and after that the industry can take it from there and build on the success trajectory.

Autonomous Cars Will Not Be Allowed In India At The Cost Of Jobs, Says India's Road Transport Minister

If you were expecting to ride a driverless car in India anytime soon, then your expectation is most likely to be never fulfilled, at least till the time the Modi government is at the centre. Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari recently addressed the media and made it clear that the government won't be allowing driverless cars in the South Asian country as they're not interested in promoting any technology or policy that has a potential of making a large number of hardworking people jobless.

He said, “No driverless cars will be allowed in India. The government is not going to promote any technology or policy that will make people jobless."

Backing his statement with facts, Gadkari revealed that as of today India is running on a shortage of 2.2 million drivers. He further added that driving skills have a potential of creating employment for a whopping five million people in the second-largest population on Earth. Hence, the government isn't in favour of erasing these high employment numbers by green lighting driverless cars.

“I saw in Sweden a 70-year-old man was driving a taxi. There (Western countries), they have less people. Here, we have more people and they need jobs. Driverless cars will take away those jobs. I am certain on this issue,” he said.

Gadkari also gave the example of how famous Cab aggregators in the country like Ola and Uber are already making big bucks by taking advantage of the driving talent pool of our country, but if they think that they can make even more money by bringing in driverless cars in the country and rendering Indians unemployed, the government won't let the situation go so far.

Recently, a survey found out that there is a 50% chance that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will surpass human intelligence in all areas within a period of about 45 years. The study conducted by researcher Katja Grace at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and a team involved surveying a total of 1,634 artificial intelligence researchers from all around the world.

The main aim of Grace's survey was to find out about when exactly do the AI experts believe that intelligent machines and the AI that power them will beat human intelligence in a number of different contexts.

The survey results shows that experts believes that within the next decade, AI has the capability of outrunning human beings in tasks like translating languages (by 2024), writing high school essays (by 2026), and driving trucks (by 2027).

According to a study done by Boston Consulting Group, the global autonomous cars market is expected to be worth a whopping $42 billion by 2025 and a jaw-dropping $77 billion by 2035. According to it, a quarter of all cars sold could be autonomous vehicles by then. But, it seems, India won't be a major part of these figures.

While the government isn't open to driverless cars for now, it is more than promoting the trend of electric cars. Recently, India’s power minister Piyush Goyal announced that the government is aiming to have an all electric-car fleet on Indian roads by the year 2030.

Discussing the plan of action for making the 2030 aim possible, Goyal said that the government could initially handhold the electric vehicle industry for 2-3 years and help it stabilise and after that the industry can take it from there and build on the success trajectory.

Delhi-based Startup To Provide Driverless Trucks To The Indian Army

Delhi-based defence IoT startup CRON Systems is working to develop the prototype of fully-functional driverless truck this year to help Indian army to deal in hostile locations. According to the team of CRON Systems, the first prototype would be ready within next six months. About 40 team members including co-founders of CRON Systems, Tushar Chhabra, Saurav Agarwala, and Tommy Katzenellenbogen are working together on the development of this prototype.

Chhabra was quoted as saying to Economic Times today, “We intend to do a pilot before December this year and have a fully functional product up and running by the first quarter next year.” He claimed that autonomous trucks can help soldiers figure out the best routes and give them zero-visibility driving capability. The existing trucks themselves will be equipped with autonomous facilities. The advantage of these vehicles is that they can reach to the soldiers during emergency without any human involvement. Further, they reduce causality by replacing soldiers at intrusion points during search operations.

The startup is already in advanced stage of discussion with two biggest automobile manufacturers in India to use the technology in their trucks. In addition, a lot of the back-end technology has been formed by collaborating with Automotive Robotics, a player in the engine and power train testing field. Chhabra said, “We plan to make a plug and play model which can be used to convert the existing trucks into autonomous or at least semi-autonomous vehicles."

RELATED READING - India’s 9 Defence Tech Startups Giving Boost To Indian Armed Forces

The startup, which had earlier developed encrypted communication system miCRON, laser walls for the Border Security Force and laser-guided surveillance systems, has come up with an offline mapping system for trucks. The laser walls at the border are used as pointers for the trucks to communicate and drive forward. Chhabra added, “At borders, we cannot use the satellite maps. That would be like giving away the positions. So, we have developed an offline mapping system.”

To safeguard against cyber threats, all the platforms along the border are connected to CRONet, an internal communication network. CRONet will not talk to any other device except the device available to the forces. “All our products are primarily designed for the Border Security Forces and Indian Army. We have three-four people sitting at our office who work 24X7 to prevent such incidents,” Chhabra concluded.

Notably, CRON Systems also singed a technology pact with Israel’s defence robotics company Automotive Robotic Industry Ltd (ARI) to integrate smart ARI rovers with CRON’s laser-guided surveillance systems.

Launched in 2015, CRON Systems joins deep research in lasers, data, artificial intelligence, encrypted communications and automation to offer accurate and seamless laser-guided intruder detection infrastructure. In January this year, the startup had received funding from YourNest, India’s leading early stage investor for the deployment of cutting edge technology solutions for the Indian security forces.

Moreover, some of the solutions produced by CRON Systems have also been adapted for commercial purposes by different industries. Tushar Chhabra, Saurav Agarwala and Tommy Katzenellenbogen founded CRON Systems in 2015. Its initial product the KAVACH Laser Wall, powered by Infrared and Laser is a Perimeter Intrusion Detection Platform has already applied at the Indo-Pak border for helping Border Security Forces (BSF). The startup is also working on Automated Drones and Smart Fencing to empower border forces with critical facilities.

[Top Image - Respresentative Via Shutterstock]

Indian Engineers Develop Automated System To Help Drivers Avoid Colliding with Animals on Roads

We at Indianweb2 have time and again carried out articles about how driverless cars are the future, but that's the thing they're still in the future. So, what about the present? Two Indian researchers, Sachin Sharma and Dharmesh Shah, from the Department of Electronics and Communication, at Gujarat Technological University, in Ahmedabad have successfully incorporated the future with the present by incorporating some of the safety features of driverless cars into present day conventional vehicles.

Writing in the International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems, the two researchers have described a real-time automatic obstacle detection and alert system for driver assistance.

During their research, the dynamic duo found out that an increased incidence of road accidents in the Indian subcontinent correlates highly with the increasing wealth and the surge in vehicle numbers that the development has resulted. However, the road infrastructure in the country isn't developing at the same pace as traffic demands especially when it comes to the roads that connects the country's villages to towns. They also found out that even on those infrastructure lacking raw roads, the Indian cow occupies a large share and represents a significant obstacles in the way of car drivers.

Though car performance and fuel economy are considered vital for marketing of a vehicle, more and more car companies have now also started dedicating more attention towards safety, security and comfort. This is because, according to the World Health Organization, road traffic collisions are the leading cause of death of people between the ages of 15 and 29 years old.

According to statistics available, even though India has the second largest road network in the world still 1 in 20,000 people die here in a road traffic accident and 12 in 70,000 are seriously injured in such accidents. Hence, car companies in the country need to place high focus on technology to reduce this incidence while designing their vehicles.

The obstacle detection and alert system conceived by Sharma and Shah makes use of a dashboard camera and an algorithm that can help the system determine whether an object near the vehicle is an on-road cattle and whether its movements represents a danger to the vehicle. If it is of any potential risk, the system even comes with an audio and visual indicator that gets triggered and forces the driver to apply the brakes whether or not they have seen the animal. According to the duo, the algorithm requires some optimisation and they still have to work out some kinks related to the issue of night-time driving.

So, while driverless cars are our future, but by the time they become a mass reality, the mankind needs to embrace the same safety measures in our present day vehicles as well.

[Top Image: ibtimes]

10 Top Things in Tech This Week

If you're one of those tech enthusiasts whose week went in by a blur of a second, all thanks to standing in long queues at banks and ATMs because of the sudden demonetisation drive that the Modi government has sprung us on, here's www.indianweb2.com giving you a quick recap of some of the most important happenings in the tech sector this week.

Here are the Top 10 tech news you must know from this week:

1) Forget Bitcoins, Meet Zcash – A New Harder-to-Trace Virtual Currency

Zcash, a new virtual currency, has made its debut and has managed to grab quite a few eyeballs within a few days of its debut. The new digital currency has been conceived and executed by meticulous university academics to be entirely untraceable. In order to make the currency untraceable, Zcash developers have made use of advanced cryptography, unlike the now in-famous Bitcoin.

Zcash developers have used zk-Snark, a method developed by a team of top cryptographers at M.I.T. and in Israel– that allowed the Zcash transactions to be confirmed by the network without any recording of the involved Zcash addresses. There is also an option to opt out of this privacy function.

2) Revolution of 3D print heart on chip by Researchers of Harvard

A Harvard team has successfully developed six custom 3D-printable materials that could have the potential of reorganising the structure of a human heart tissue with embedded soft strain sensors. These are printable through continuous and automated processes and separate wells in the chip host of different tissues.

3) Indian Government is Preparing for a Cyber War, Says IT Minister
Indian Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad recently revealed that his government is currently in the process of preparing for a bloodless war, by strengthening its cyber security measures. In order to achieve in the same, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-Inc.) has been strengthened.

According to Prasad, "National Cyber Coordination Centre has been set up to provide near real time awareness on situations and response rapidly as such Rs 9.85 Billion project to be completed in five years."

The phase I of the project has already been tendered and expected to be operational by March next year.

4) Gaana launches india’s first music streaming chatbot

The week saw popular music-streaming app Gaana debuting its Facebook Messenger chatbot, the Gaana Facebook Messenger chatbot. The chatbot is the world’s first music streaming chatbot inside the FB messenger app.

With the chatbot, Ganna offers the following features to its users:

a) Receive instant updates about all the fresh content on Gaana's official website.
b) Search for music on its official website.
c) Share their favourite content with their Facebook friends.
d) Send feedback to Gaana.
e) Go straight her to the app/website from the FB Messenger.

5) The 5 Hottest Emerging Technologies of 2016

The World Economic Forum has announced a list of the top 5 hottest emerging technologies of this year. They are as follows:

a) Next Generation Batteries as per renewable energy: Advancements in energy storage using sodium, aluminium and zinc-based batteries has now made it possible to have mini-grids that could provide round-the-clock, clean, reliable energy sources to an entire village.

b) Open AI ecosystem: With the advancements made this year, humans have reached a few steps nearer to smart digital assistants that will be able to help them with a vast range of tasks, right from keeping a track of their health, finances and even advising on what and what not to wear.

c) 2D Materials: With the production costs escalating at a great rate, 2D materials like Graphene are now being used in a wide range of applications, right from water and air filters to new generations wearables and batteries.

d) BlockChain Impact: Blockchain, the distributed electronic ledger behind the much famous online currency bitcoin, has the potential of having great economic and social impact. In fact, with the pace that it is developing, it could even fundamentally change the way the governments and market function.

e) Self Driven Cars: Autonomous vehicles had a field day in this year. Though not legal in various countries yet, the technology has the potential of boosting economies, saving lives and cutting pollution by a great deal.

6) Manipal Student Wins Prize for Designing Waterless, Odourless Loo for Railways

Vinod Anthony Thomas, a student of Manipal University, has designed a waterless and odourless toilet in order to solve all the toilet issues currently being faced by the Indian Railways. In fact, Vinod has won himself a second prize for his this very invention. The competition was held by the Indian Railways keeping in line with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much ambitious Clean India initiative.

The award-winning design takes care of the old, unhygienic way of disposal of human waste on the railway tracks by introducing a system of waste management that replaces the system of flushing with water and generation of foul smell with a conveyor system carrying waste in a hermetically sealed pocket to a large collection bin to store waste. This is run manually by a crank wheel. The bin effectively reduces the amount of waste by way of forced ventilation, and decomposition.

7) Ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes makes E-wallets go mainstream

The Modi government's sudden move to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from being legal tender has spelled good times for the all the digital payment solutions startups in India. These startups had been facing tough times after a period of dramatic growth since their launch, and the demonetisation has been able to add a breath of fresh lives to these startups.

For example, India's largest mobile payment wallet, Paytm, saw its app downloads swell by three times and payments for offline transactions grow by five time in the first two days following the government's announcement. Another mobile payment wallet, MobiKwik, saw a solid 100 percent growth in its customer numbers day-on-day in the past week. The trend is similar in all other digital payment solutions startups.

8) Facebook is now testing new ‘Rooms’ feature in Messenger chat app

Social networking giant Facebook is now testing its new 'Rooms' feature in its Messenger chat app. It was in the year 2014 that Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook had first tried its hands on Rooms as a semi-anonymous social networking app, but it abruptly shut it down a year later in 2015.

FB is testing the integration of a the 'Rooms' feature in its Messenger chat app. Currently, the feature can also be used in Canada and Australia. Rooms are meant for public conversations about interests and topics. Reportedly, each of the room has a link that can be shared with anyone on the Messenger app so that anyone can join-in in the conversation.

9) Researchers develop 'smart' material that can de-ice any surface

A team of researchers have meticulously worked towards discovering a`smart' material that can be applied to any surface to repel ice. The discovered material, magnetic slippery surface (MAGSS), is able to outperform all the others ones that are currently in usage to repel ice.

While one side of MAGSS is coated with a magnetic material, the other side is a thin layer of magnetic fluid -a mixture of fluid and iron oxide nanoparticles. The magnetic fluid is on the outer side.

10) Hong Kong banks testing new biometric technology

Two Hong Kong banks are interested in testing the use of biometric authentication of securities trading under the Hong Kong's banking regulator's new regulatory regime, said information given out by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). It was in September this year, that the authority had launched a new regime that allowed banks to use a "sandbox" to test new technologies on a limited basis before deploying them to the general public.

Indian Techie Builds Driver-Less Car

[caption id="attachment_104011" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Dr. Roshy John (in center) with his team[/caption]

"If you have passion, you can achieve anything." This particular saying fits perfectly to Dr. Roshy John, who heads Robotics and Cognitive Systems at Tata Consultancy Services in Kochi. The tech junkie is currently getting noticed in the tech world for an invention he did in his spare time.

Dr. John has built a self-driving Tata Nano. Not only this, a modular system used to achieve the feat can be retrofitted in any car in just over an hour.

According to John, he was intrigued to try his hand at the project because of a situation he faced in his real life. One fine evening, while returning from a trip he called for a taxi at the airport in order to reach home safe and sound. To his astonishment the taxi's driver was more exhausted and sleepy than he was. So, instead of taking the risk and letting him drive, John decided to get behind the wheels himself. This little incident inspired the techie in him to use his skills and capabilities to build an autonomous vehicle.



Having a strong background in robotics, John thought that is the area he would like to explore to find a solution to the problem. He then decided to select the Tata Nano for his project. According to him, the reason for this was manifold. Firstly, Nano is a cost efficient model and secondly, it has a rear engine which makes adding actuators and sensors to the front of the Nano much easier.

After the car was finalised for the project, John and his skilful team did a complete simulation along with the virtual simulation of the car in order to ensure the concept works properly. Further, in order to make the car equipped to the city environment, they decided to add cameras to the rear of the cars and make changes to their algorithms to according to the results received.

Once John and his team were happy with the results they got during their first test drive, they decided to accommodate the cameras, sensors and actuators in a newly purchased Tata Nano car. The main hurdle here was to replicate the real life model of simulation which was earlier achieved by them. Once that was done, they started testing the system in the real world.

During the tests, it was revealed that simulation automatically assumed the car would have an automatic transmission system. But, the Nano they were using had manual transmission. Hence, in order to solve this major problem, John and his team decided to build a manual automatic transmission system that would help in mapping the simulated model with the Nano.

Indian Techie Builds Driver-Less Car

[caption id="attachment_104011" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Dr. Roshy John (in center) with his team[/caption]

"If you have passion, you can achieve anything." This particular saying fits perfectly to Dr. Roshy John, who heads Robotics and Cognitive Systems at Tata Consultancy Services in Kochi. The tech junkie is currently getting noticed in the tech world for an invention he did in his spare time.

Dr. John has built a self-driving Tata Nano. Not only this, a modular system used to achieve the feat can be retrofitted in any car in just over an hour.

According to John, he was intrigued to try his hand at the project because of a situation he faced in his real life. One fine evening, while returning from a trip he called for a taxi at the airport in order to reach home safe and sound. To his astonishment the taxi's driver was more exhausted and sleepy than he was. So, instead of taking the risk and letting him drive, John decided to get behind the wheels himself. This little incident inspired the techie in him to use his skills and capabilities to build an autonomous vehicle.



Having a strong background in robotics, John thought that is the area he would like to explore to find a solution to the problem. He then decided to select the Tata Nano for his project. According to him, the reason for this was manifold. Firstly, Nano is a cost efficient model and secondly, it has a rear engine which makes adding actuators and sensors to the front of the Nano much easier.

After the car was finalised for the project, John and his skilful team did a complete simulation along with the virtual simulation of the car in order to ensure the concept works properly. Further, in order to make the car equipped to the city environment, they decided to add cameras to the rear of the cars and make changes to their algorithms to according to the results received.

Once John and his team were happy with the results they got during their first test drive, they decided to accommodate the cameras, sensors and actuators in a newly purchased Tata Nano car. The main hurdle here was to replicate the real life model of simulation which was earlier achieved by them. Once that was done, they started testing the system in the real world.

During the tests, it was revealed that simulation automatically assumed the car would have an automatic transmission system. But, the Nano they were using had manual transmission. Hence, in order to solve this major problem, John and his team decided to build a manual automatic transmission system that would help in mapping the simulated model with the Nano.