A six-member team of St Joseph’s College of Engineering and Technology, Palai, were declared winners at the grand finale of Smart India Hackathon 2019, organised by the Ministry of Human Resource Development and AICTE, held at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh.
The team 'Trojan Code,' which comprised of Daibin Raju, Alka Augustine, Jeebu Abraham Aniyankunju, Joel James, Irene Treesa Jose and Ashna Saji, was mentored by Prof. Sarju S of the Computer Science Engineering Department.
They had won the software edition of the hackathon for their project, 'Blackbox logging for drones.’
In a day and age where drones are being employed in almost every case scenario – from photography and goods delivery, to air reconnaissance and defence, it seemed essential to build a pocket-friendly method of logging and transmitting vital information from drones to the user on the ground.
“What differentiated our flight recorder is the ability to track the module even when there is a loss in the GPS signal data,” says Daibin.
They have implemented a system based on the age-old process in navigation, called 'dead reckoning.’
“For this, we have introduced an electronic device called an Intertial Measurement Unit into our black box, which reports a body’s specific acceleration, angular rate and direction of travel, using a combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes,” Daibin adds.
The IMU-enabled GPS unit allows for operations where signals are unavailable, such as in tunnels, inside buildings, under dense forests, or in areas of considerable signal interference, upto a 10-km radius.
Joel and Jeebu elaborated on providing end-to-end encryption to the incoming data, in order to prevent possible leaks if a drone goes adrift beyond enemy lines.
On being asked what was their most challenging task during the two-day hackathon, Alka had just one answer - the motivation to remain awake. She, along with Irene and Ashna had worked on transmitting accurate flight information from the drone, to the web application on the ground. “Our front end data was handled by PHP, a generic programing language, while the back-end data was processed by Python that analysed anomalies in data based on predetermined algorithms,” she quips.
The grand finale of Smart India Hackathon 2019, dubbed as the ‘World’s biggest open innovation model,' saw more than 1,300 teams competing non-stop for 36 hours, across 48 different centres.
Winning teams are awarded with a cash prize, besides being provided technical support and an opportunity to collaborate with various private and public sector organizations in the country.