Analog Devices initiated Anveshan Design Fellowship as a biennial system design fellowship in 2010 focused on enhancing System Design knowledge among university students. We saw a perceptible gap in theory versus practical knowledge among graduating students. As compared to a design contest where participating teams run on their own, Anveshan focused on mentorship, pairing up the student teams with a faculty advisor and a mentor from the industry.
The chosen finalists were asked to design a system of their choosing within 9 months
Architecture reviews, design reviews, interim milestones, regular meetings with mentors and presentations ensured that the participating teams got a feel of how real system designs was done in the industry. The participating teams also presented to industry leaders and visiting Analog Devices executives including the CTO and other industry leaders. Most teams participating in Anveshan also took the Anveshan project up as their final year project with permission from their university.
This unique fellowship approach went extremely well and was lauded by both university faculty and participating teams. In 2012, we scaled up the student design fellowship to 100 universities, followed by outreach to over 300 engineering colleges and universities with over 120 teams participating in 2014. For the projects that won top awards at Anveshan 2014.
Anveshan 2016 is focused on IoT and open to both Students and Professionals
Moving forward, Anveshan 2016-17 is focused on Internet of Things (IoT) space. This rapidly growing and evolving Internet of Things (IoT) space, is the convergence of multi-disciplinary facets of engineering such as hardware, IT, big data analytics, as well as cloud and connectivity, bringing a new era of connected devices ushering in new and innovative business models. IoT is an engineer’s dream, involving a multi-faceted solution involving multiple disciplines, either using existing technology or new technology innovations to build a solution solving a business need.
Indian ecosystem meantime is maturing fast with a number of new-age IoT and data analytics startups, with a strong engineering talent for IoT, and an emerging maker community. India’s government has taken aggressive steps on big goals of Digital India, smart cities, productive and inclusive healthcare, agriculture productivity and smart factories for Make in India.
Anveshan IoT Fellowship provides a platform to ideate, create, test, and experiment with IoT technologies, products and solutions. We decided to expand Anveshan for the first time beyond the engineering student community to encompass the entire innovation ecosystem. This includes IoT startups, makers, hobbyists and others under the broad umbrella of Professionals. The two groups- Students and Professionals are eligible to participate in Anveshan but will be judged separately, ultimately winning attractive cash awards besides the projects being funded and guided by Analog Devices.
Who Owns the IP? What are the benefits of participating in Anveshan?
If you have an idea on the evolving Internet of Things (IoT) space that would transform tomorrow, join Anveshan IoT Fellowship. Anveshan will help give shape to your idea and make it a reality. It is a platform to Ideate, Create, Test and Experiment with IoT products, services, technology and algorithms, hardware or software, a product or a service. Analog Devices will fund and guide this effort for the finalist teams.
The Intellectual Property (IP) the participating teams brings, innovates or develops will solely be with the participating teams which is unlike any other similar competitions where the IP transfers over to the organizing company. Analog Devices will be funding and guiding this effort to bring your ideas to a ready prototype stage.
As the teams develop the solutions, Analog Devices would help initiate dialog with external experts, potential partners and customers for the solution. We will facilitate a pilot to fine tune the solution as and when required. Based on the quality and the progress made, finalist teams would be showcased to potential customers, investors, industry experts, industry bodies, media, incubators & accelerators to get the help from the relevant partners, investors to take the IoT solution forward.
How is Anveshan different?
We have had several design contests, Hackathons and Makathons in the past and present, with majority of them focused on IoT. But, unlike a Hackathon or Makeathon, which are short-term proof of concept prototypes to learn, Anveshan is run differently as participating teams are encouraged to go much deeper and develop an idea through a focused effort, test and refine the concept for a much longer timeframe of up to nine months. We believe a well thought out project requires time, effort, nurturing, feedback from potential customers and fine tuning to make this a close reality.
With Anveshan you go that extra mile, to make this as close to reality as possible and do not stop at just a learning project.
Anveshan gives participants an opportunity to conceptualize, develop and showcase the innovation which could be a complete innovative IoT product or service catering to a specific market need, a core technology applicable to IoT, software algorithm or data analytics framework solving a particular problem, all in a low-risk setting, with funding and guidance provided by Analog Devices. External mentors, potential customers and industry experts are also available and ready to support the finalist teams.
Under the Anveshan program, Analog Devices India will fund projects with a maximum amount of INR 1,00,000 assigned to each finalist teams. A choice of IoT platform will also be provided. Student and professional teams will be assessed and appraised separately. Student teams could use Anveshan as a final year project, and must have an assigned faculty advisor along with a mentor from Analog Devices.
So what kind of projects are we expecting? Food for Thought!
For Anveshan, you choose the topic of your interest. It could be a vertically integrated solution where you pick up a sensor, the cloud platform, the connectivity and the edge node and create an analytics framework to offer a value added business or service. It would be a focused on a horizontal play to solve a particular IoT problem like energy harvesting, enhancing trusted security or analytics running on the edge, fog our cloud. We will urge you to look for pertinent and practical problems to solve with IoT.
Today, building a sensor to the cloud project with Arduino or Raspberry Pie connected to a bunch of sensors and getting the data out to a cloud platform is a basic and necessary step for IoT. Building such platform is a few hours to days of effort with the rich ecosystem that many companies and IoT platforms have today. Showcase a sensor data available on the cloud is just the basic building block. Anveshan goal is to take you beyond this basic IoT tutorial.
As you consider topics for proposals, we encourage you to look at the www.analog.com/anveshan Design Resources tab where we have compiled a list of IoT design resources for you. I would also encourage you to read McKinsey report “Internet of Things: Mapping the Value, beyond the Hype”, an excellent source to learn and brainstorm on the cases of how and why IoT would change the world as we see it.
Project proposals can be any area of IoT. While the scope is very wide, I am sighting a few examples which are pertinent problems that customers are looking for today. The examples are by no means exhaustive.
• Image/Video Analytics for CCTVs for a variety of applications (http://tinyurl.com/hvgx8g5)
• Water Management & Leak Detection
• Affordable soil, moisture and Ph testing and analytics for Indian farmers
• Technology solutions Traffic Monitoring and Management
• Affordable Pollution Monitoring sensors and calibration against high grade sensors
• Energy harvesting technologies
• IoT Security
• Quality of food, materials by a low cost cloud connected spectrometer (http://ow.ly/4na4zg)
• Sensor Fusion – Intelligent Algorithms sensing multiple sensor data points
• Modify a protocol stack to get better range and reliability for wide area networks like smart grid and smart cities
• Predicting when a motor will fail based on vibration, power factor etc.
• Ultra Low Power solutions & Energy Harvesting
• Domain specific Big Data analytics & Algorithms
• Frameworks for predictive analytics with deep learning
• Build an innovative IoT Product or Service (Why is it unique and how does it benefit?)
• Flooding and leak detection in homes and water pipes
• And MANY MANY MANY More…
How will the proposals be evaluated?
We are looking at well thought out ideas, and serious and passionate teams to make them successful. The project proposal should address a need in the IoT landscape, it should be practical and affordable to deploy. We are looking at innovative ways to do things, and would expect market knowledge and understanding of similar efforts that have been put in the past or present. As highlighted before, project proposal could be building a hardware and software as a technology solution for IoT or could be an integration approach to build a sensor to the cloud to offer a specific IoT product or service.
As soon as the teams register, they will receive a Word document template with the format for submitting their proposals. Teams are also encourage to send a short video explaining the problem and the solution.
This story was authored by Somshubhro (Som) Pal Choudhury, managing director, Analog Devices India.
