A Blend Of Theory And Practice

This article briefly compares what we study and what is required in industry! In a couple other articles I will try to give a few examples on how you can acquire best of both the worlds so that you have a better picture of it and try to work towards it.

What’s our education system like

Compulsory Disciplinary Courses (CDCs) are the mandatory courses that you will have to do in your 3^rd and 4^th years of engineering to get a bachelor’s degree. I was in your shoes a few years back and it’s sad but true that most of us memorize formulae and get good grades in these CDCs. Indian education system is very textbook oriented. Be it any university, we have a certain prescribed textbook and the professor teaches exactly from that textbook. If that textbook- professor combination is good, you like that subject and you explore more, otherwise you bunk classes.

Good thing about our education system is the fact that we are molded fairly strongly in the mathematical aspect of any subject. We can analyze any particular engineering system optimally in a theoretical manner. But when it comes to building that system, we lack in experience and the tools. In the west what I experienced is something different. An undergraduate student may not be very proficient in calculus or differential equations or matrices (which are basically building blocks of engineering) but when it comes to building a working prototype of any phenomenon, they have the required tools.

What’s in the western education system?

The reason behind this is the western education system for engineering. They have something called as design projects/ semester long course projects in most of the courses. These either include a part of a research problem the course instructor is working on or any relevant project that students choose. Teams of students constitute MEs, EEs and CS guys and the work is divided accordingly. Each project has biweekly/ monthly design reviews by the professor where the teams present their progress in front of the class. During every design review, the professor gives guidelines for the next few weeks. Basically students learn a theoretical concept in class and in parallel apply that concept in their design project. At the end of the semester, every team comes up with a working prototype of the theory that they learnt in the class.

My personal experience

I can give you one example of such project I was involved in. In our mechatronics course we had to design a nano-positioning system which will position a certain object in all three co-ordinates. My team constituted of one doctoral (PhD) student working in the nano-positioning research area of the course instructor, one mechanical engineer, one hardware engineer and me. The PhD student contributed in the physical design of the system, the math/ physics behind it and how to model the system on paper. I was responsible for developing a controller that would control the system. The mechanical engineer was responsible for solid modeling and machining/manufacturing the system prototype and then the hardware engineer was in charge of deploying my controller on the actual hardware and interfacing it with the sensors and actuators! ….Result: We got a cool working mechatronic system by applying all the interdisciplinary knowledge that we learnt from the course, and we as a team learnt different aspects of engineering from each other.  Here is the link of the research if you are interested.

Multi axis NanoPositioning System

What you can do to take the best of both worlds!

So the giveaway is: Try to explore tools and try to get hands on experience in the CDCs that you like, or that you want to do your career in. Don’t waste your spare time in fetching new reference books and solving problems behind the chapters. Spend time in learning softwares relevant to the course (it could be softwares like MATLAB/ Simulink, Octave, Solid Works/ProE,  EagleCAD, Labview etc) or programming languages like C/ C++. Try to find interested people on campus and tag along with them to build something cool. Have simple tools like soldering iron, screws, hammers, pliers/ strippers, an arduino board, some resistors, capacitors, some wires handy. Make use of your campus workshop facility. It’s exciting to try out small things that your learn in your courses, even if it’s just blinking an LED, or using a mosfet to switch high loads: that will give you immense satisfaction and enthusiasm to build more. As you dive more and more into your discipline during your engineering years, you will develop a good blend in formulating any system on paper and then building a small prototype of it!

So.. good luck! Get your hands dirty! :) ..A combination of strong mathematical background and hands on experience will do wonders when you go into the industry!

BITS Top 10

This article is mainly for current and aspiring-to-be BITSians. After talking to many I realized that they made a decision to study at BITS based on its brand name and what it stands for. To understand "what it stands for" from outside is not that easy. To many, it stands for knowledge being power supreme. While a number of industries and universities consider it to be an equivalent to IITs, a few regard it being better in some aspects.

I've had a chance to work with BARC, Tensilica, Cisco, Qualcomm and Purdue so far. I believe this to be a varied set of institutions. I've engaged in many conversations with colleagues and friends and tried to form my opinion on "what makes BITS unique and special". Here's what I think about my Alma mater.

Top 10 things that make BITS (and BITSians) special:

10. On-campus organizations: give many a chance to get involved in activities of their choice and cultivate extra-curricular interests.

9. BITSAT (admissions): is India's first online entrance test considered having a very low rate of acceptance and is reservation-free.     

8. Excellent textbook choices: provide (an opportunity to learn) state-of-the-art knowledge of a topic.

7. Diversity: among students and faculty ensures that we share a stronger bond of being a BITSian.

6. Hostel life: teaches how to manage one's own life.

5. Mini-tests: ensure we don't fall out of track and follow the same academic standards as that of any US/UK university or an MBA school.

4. International recognition: is not just a "feel-good" factor, but helps summarize your educational background in a few words to many across the world. 

3. Emphasis on basic sciences: helps one shape her ideas and get on to the basics.

2. The BITSian network: always reaches out to a fellow BITSian for guidance and help when needed.

1. Practice school: is the most important factor why industries and academia like us.

Interdisciplinary Skills - A Taste of Robotics and Bio-mechanics

So, as mentioned  in the previous article (dated Feb 17, 2013), let’s go over some of the varieties of Mechanical Engineering. I mentioned a few branches which you can explore (like MEMS, Energy Harvesting, Computational Mechanics etc).  All the fields I mentioned are very interdisciplinary. This means that you will see a confluence of many other disciplines along with mechanical engineering.

As an example, consider Mechatronics and Robotics. The applications of this branch spans from, say, spot welding robots in the auto industry, through the Da Vinci robot performing automated surgeries, through the Curiosity Mars rover that is exploring mars all by itself.

Here are some interesting links of such applications:

• Spot Welding in Auto Industry
• DaVinci Robot doing surgery  
• How a doctor Operates the Da Vinci
• Curiosity Mars Rover  (I actually experienced the landing of the rover live at NASA labs in California. It was amazing! )

         

To design these systems you need decent knowledge various aspects of mechanical engineering like solid modeling, stress analysis, right tolerance and dimensional analysis,  actual manufacturing of the robot, material science to select right materials that would sustain external pressures, temperatures etc etc.. list is endless. But this is not sufficient. You need heavy electronics to make the robot do what you designed it for. Any mechatronic system will have sensors to sense the environment and actuators to do the action..which are nothing but electrical signals read by some electronic PCBs. In addition to electronics, you need computer science. You will need to add intelligence to the robot to do the task which it is designed for and for that you need good grasp on programming languages (embedded C, C++, python etc) that will talk to the electronic micro controllers inside the bot.

Ok Okay… well..you as a single entity need not be an expert in all these.. I mean..if you are.. Great! ..but if not.. That’s fine too.. usually there are teams of people doing such specialized tasks. But you as a Mechanical engineer..should be at least aware of all these (so that people don’t fool you around! :)).

Same is the case with other fields like say Bio Mechanics or medical instrumentation. What do you think is the basis of all the surgical tools? .. Mechanical Engineering! A good mechanical engineer will be able to design, model and manufacture various surgical tools for different surgeries. Some innovators invent tools which can be used in multiple ways. If you look at Intuitive Surgicals’ website you will realize how many Mechanical Engineers they want. Here are some of the professors at UM which are in Mechanical department and involved in Biomechanics and Bio systems engineering. ..and there are many such universities too.. I will leave that to you to do a research if you are really interested in this area.

So..my point is..being a mechanical engineer.. you need not constrain yourself to manufacturing or securing a job on an assembly line doing some QA crap! (that sucks L).. or switch to MBA! You can explore many things without shifting fields.. keep one thing in mind.. Mechanical engineering, now, is not just constrained to itself. Wherever you go, you will have to interact with people from electronics, people from computer science and people specializing in the application specific areas (like doctors if you are into medical instrumentation or physicists if you are in a team designing Mars rovers at NASA!)

So..make sure you develop that skill set too!

(In few articles I will try to go over some electronics/ electrical engineering and some tools that will help you in building an all-round personality around your respective discipline! Some of my other friends specialized in these disciples will also share  there experience with you guys!)

C u soon!

--Tejas

Mechanical Engineering: Not Only About Drilling Holes In A Block Of Metal!

Before I begin… What is all this??   Well..we are a group of guys (like you.. who a few years back were behind good grades or addicted to counter strike :) ..but now are working in various industries or universities in different parts of the world) who will try to write articles (spanning over wide variety of disciplines) that will give you a glimpse of academia and industry, touch upon some exciting technical topics and try to create a platform to share and discuss ideas!.. Believe me..something which is infinitely exciting when you stumble upon some random group of people with same interests. 

A little bit about myself: 

I did my Mechanical Engineering from BITS-Pilani Goa Campus. After my undergraduate studies I pursued my Masters from University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and currently I am working in Automotive domain mainly focused on electric powertrains.. the so-called future of  cars.

So as a common misconception of most of the first yearites (including me).. mechanical engineering is not only about designing cars or spending time in workshop doing manual labor :) . There are so many different facets of this discipline that one can explore… and it becomes very exciting when it gets interdisciplinary. As a broad division you all know mech spans design, thermal, fluids, and solid mechanics. But these are very broad categories and I feel before you graduate you should be aware of the numerous more branches that you can focus on. So here are some more fields that I can think of..

1. Automotive
2. Control Systems
3. Mechatronics and Robotics
4. MEMS and NanoTechnology
5. Energy Harvesting (Renewable resources)
6. Dynamics and Vibrations
7. Computational Mechanics
8. Fracture Mechanics
9. CFD
10. Bio Mechanics and Bio systems engineering ….umm.. and I guess a lot more.

There are so many universities abroad that specialize in these areas of mechanical engineering (like MIT, UM, Berkeley, UT Austin, RWTHAachen etc etc) and I feel a funded gateway to such research labs is the knowledge about these fields and possibly a couple relevant projects on your resume.. and good contacts.

So, even though I know the CDCs are important and will provide you the basis for the discipline.. and are mandatory for a good GPA ;) … I feel we can spend some time in exploring a few of these. In next coming articles I will try to glance over some of these and try to give you guys a picture of what all exciting things are waiting for you …if you remain in engineering :)

Cya soon…..

--Tejas

Introduction

We are a group of students who passed out from BITS four years ago. In the hopes of giving something back to the student and alumni community, this is our humble effort to collect digestible chunks of knowledge that might be useful to:

• Current students trying to get a better grip on their study at BITS
• People who have graduated, and are working in the industry
• People who are aiming to further their interests in academia!