City student's car design wins laurels in Vancouver

Mechanical engineering students have designed a two-seater vehicle for 2030, which can communicate with a parking lot server, locate an empty spot and park itself automatically

Mechanical engineering students have designed a two-seater vehicle for 2030, which can communicate with a parking lot server, locate an empty spot and park itself automatically

A team of six mechanical engineering students from PES Institute of Technology have designed a car to solve the city's parking problems. The two-seater's wheels can turn 90 degrees and the car can even find an empty parking space and park itself without a driver. The team managed to design a Sustainable Urban Transport vehicle design for 2030 and announced the same to the world, at the Vancouver Global Forum of Partners in Advanced Collaborative Engineering (PACE).

Team member Viswanath said that they finally froze on the idea for the mechanism after months of thought.
"Now we need to select a suitable location to manufacture and market 50,000 cars," he said . While the student's ideas seem quite far-fetched for today's world, this two-passenger vehicle has left the automobile industry with something to think about. "Due to the unpredictable nature of Indian traffic, we have restricted the car to autonomous mode between city and industrial areas only," said Puneeth, another team member.

No parking woes
With parking woes in the forefront, the vehicle design has some interesting features. "The design has smart parking solutions, wherein the wheels can turn 90 degrees and allow slot parking autonomously. The car can communicate with parking servers and accurately locate an empty parking slot and park itself without a driver," explained team member Royston Fernandes.

While the plan sounds perfect, the team still faced several problems with internal communication initially.
"The team's biggest problem was collaboration with other institutes and conflicting schedules caused problems,"u00a0 said Professor S V Satish, Mechanical Engineering Department, PESIT and Regional Leader.

Boon for all
It took the team a year to come up with technologically feasible features for the car and they are currently checking whether they are functional. When the car makes its appearance, it is expected to cost around Rs 4 -5 lakh. While the car has definitely found international appeal, it remains to be seen if it would interest Indian audiences as well.