Bytes_final

Beginners’ KornerFor the starters

Digging the roots #1“Cyborg”

Geek-o-GadgetWhat’s new!

Giant Robots FightIt’s Japan vs USA

By tesSeptember 2015 Vol 1 Issue 1

GOOGLE ATAP “We like Epic Shit”

Cyborg’s Tech Review

Team Bytes

EditorSwati Samikshya Sahoo

Content and EditingRohit Suri

G. Vamsi KrishnaP. Lakshmi Narayan Patro

Shruti MohantyMareesh Issar

Siddharth ChoudhuryMohini Gupta

T. Satish KumarAmartya Majumdar

Snehalata SinhaSaikat Chakraborty

DesignerSourav Mohapatra

Cyborg’s Tech Review Bytes

cyborg.nitrkl.ac.in

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Grab a BYTE!

Welcome to the very first issue of Cyborg’s Tech-

nical magazine: Bytes. We are born into an age where it goes without saying that not being tech-savvy has turned into a taboo. Hence this humble at-tempt of bringing to our very own NITR junta the complete go-to tech guide. India with its largest youth population is currently an untapped power-house of enigmatic minds wait-ing just for the right moment to set free and take off their flight. The likes of Nadella and Pichai are proof that Indians are as capable as any, if not better, to hold the reigns of this digital world. They have become the trendsetters and have inspired thousands not to just dream big but also to make it large in life. Recently we lost a gem of a person who also was a beacon in the darkness for many, who gave hope that no matter what your background is you can always make it to the highest post of Indian democracy. Mis-sile Man Dr A.P.J Abdul Kalam. Mediocrity is a crime in today’s world and that’s something that we have to swallow. With the increasing pace we are left with but one option: Buckle Up! “The Geek shall inherit the Earth” – recently I came across this tagline on someone’s tee,

and how true is that, given the present scenario. A word that was used as an insult a few decades back is now termed as a matter of pride. This in it-self is enough to show the shift in the axis in the minds of the Gen-Y. WordWeb app defines geek as a knowledgeable and obsessive computer enthu-siast, but we all know better don’t we? Speaking of apps, this has turned truly into an “apptastic” world. A touch on your screen and voila! Anything you ask for is right there. Apps have become one of the most significant landmarks in recent times, which is why all major e-commerce sites like Flipkart are moving towards apps-only services. This has opened the doors to data mining, big data and numerous other fields with rejuvenated energy. So, the op-tions and possibilities run into millions. It’s upon us geeks now, how and when we grab them. It’s upon us to herald in a new age of innovation, ideas and ignited minds on the wings of fire. All we need is a “Shi-vam” at Apple Inc. to complete the “Satyam Shivam Sunda-ram” trinity of the tech world! Happy Byting!

Swati Samikshya Sahoo

You have a giant robot, we have a giant robot – we have a duty to the science fiction lovers of this

world to fight them to the death. America laid down the challenge; Japan has accepted. In one year’s time, the two countries will face off on neutral soil for the world’s first international giant robot dual. Two 15-foot-tall steel gundam suits with one or two pilots inside, facing each other in battle. There will be guns, there will be giant swinging steel fists, and the fight won’t be over until one has pounded the other into scrap. Can you hear that sound? It’s the gentle foam-ing of a million anime fans. So what do the two com-petitors look like at this stage? Well, the Megabot is 15 feet tall and 12,000 pounds, and Suidobashi’s Kura-tas is around 13 feet and 9,000 pounds. The Megabot moves around on a pair of tank-style tracks, where the Kuratas is faster and lighter, and gets around on a set of 4 wheels, on wide extending legs that can raise the robot up to get around quickly. The Megabot requires two pilots, one driver and one gunner to op-erate its huge arm-mounted paintball cannons, which fire oversized paintballs at over 120 miles per hour, enough to dent car panels! The Kuratas takes just one pilot, who is treated to a vastly more high-tech augmented reality heads-up display in the cockpit, in-cluding an automated target acquisition and tracking interface that keeps its guns trained on an opponent. The guns in this case include twin Gatling BB can-nons that can fire 6,000 BB pellets per minute, and a fairly flaccid-looking water cannon thingy that sends floppy missiles out in more or less random directions. It’s fair to say neither robot is currently ready for com-bat. It’s hard to see how the Megabot’s paintball can-nons will trouble the Kuratas pilot in his fully enclosed cabin, and whether the Kuratas’s BB pellets or water missiles will even annoy the Megabot team. And both machines are so slow at this point that it’s hard to see how their slow punches will do any damage at

all. But each team will have 12 months to prepare, and work out a set of rules of engagement that will include weapons fighting as well as hand to hand melee combat. Everyone knows what’s at stake: Sci-fi fans won’t be expecting a Real Steel-like clash of the titans in the very first giant robot fight, but they won’t be impressed if it’s not a spectacle. Surely, a technological battle royale of such mag-nitude was not planned without a defi-nite foresight, the foresight here being, in making sure this won’t be a one time show. If there was ever a saying that the beginning defines the end, this epitomiz-es every syllable of it. Enthusiasts, just keep your fingers crossed cause at the end of the day, the future of this sport rests upon the ability of Megabots and Suidobashi to make these things excit-ing to watch from the very first time itself.

Giant Robots Fight


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5CONTENTS

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9

Beginners’ KornerWelcome beginners! ,New to tech? Not to fret. Get introduced to our world.

Google ATAPWe like epic shit

More than just a search engine.

Digging the Roots #1Find out the root!

Diggind the word “Cyborg”

CyborgThe club and who we areWhat we do? How we do? The article about the only robotics club of NITR

Geek-o-GadgetsThe Tech article

All the new technology and gadgets

Pheonix RobotixA lodestar in entrepreneurship.The dream startup

5Giant Robots FightSeen transformers fight?Not transformers, but Japan vs USA. Robo war!

Estinno: Eastern InnovationWe dream, They dare.

Artificial IntelligenceHumanity’s Last Big Thing

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Cyborg’s Tech ReviewNational Institute of Technology, Rourkela Bytes

cyborg.nitrkl.ac.inBytes • Vol 1 Issue 1

6 7National Institute of Technology, RourkelaCyborg 6

Project Soli OOGLE ATAP

“We like Epic Shit”The ubiquitous Google is known to most as the

indispensable search engine and the com-pany developing Android OS. But few are aware of the various “moonshots” that Google works on, through Google X and Google ATAP. Google X is a semi-secret research center founded by Sergey Brin which is not heard of often, on the other hand Google ATAP is led by Dr. Regina

E. Dugan, Vice-president of engineering in google. Let’s take a tour of the latest projects by the Advanced Technologies and Products (ATAP) group: Project Tango, Project Soli, Project Jacquard and Project Ara that aim to change the world as we know it.

We had various ways to control technol-ogy like touchscreens, remotes etc.

But what could be a better control device than our bare hands! Yeah that right, just your hands!Project Soli aims to use these motions to control other devices. For example, your hand could become a virtual dial to control volume on a speaker, or a virtual touchpad to browse a map on a smartwatch screen. Some of us might wonder this is what gesture recog-nition is doing presently, so what’s new? Well for starters this works even through materi-als and is not effected as easily as cameras by external disturbances and the accuracy is very good compared to the present meth-ods. Project Soli brings us the new interaction sensor using RADAR Technology. The sen-sor can track sub-millimeter motions at high speed and accuracy. It fits onto a chip and is built into small devices and everyday ob-jects. The huge RADAR tech has been scaled down to a 5x5mm piece of silicon. Soli illu-minates the whole hand with a broad radar beam, and estimates the hand configuration by analyzing changes in the returned signal over time. The team built the first prototype, in just 10 months. They’re working on final-izing the development board and software API for release to developers later this year.

Project Tango

Project Tango technology gives a mobile device the ability to navigate the physi-

cal world similar to how we do as humans. It brings a new kind of spatial perception to the Android device platform by adding advanced computer vision, image processing, and spe-cial vision sensors. This project is a bit older than the others and the software and hard-ware development kits have been released already and can be found on Tango website. Motion tracking allows a device to under-stand position and orientation using Project Tango’s custom sensors. This gives you real-time information about the 3D motion of a de-vice. Depth sensors can tell you the shape of the world around you. Understanding depth lets your virtual world interact with the real world in new ways. Project Tango devices can self-correct errors in motion tracking and relocalize in areas they’ve seen before. The technology works on various Android device platforms that run C, Java, and Unity and can give the gaming industry new dimensions.

Beginners’ KornerToday, microcontrollers, or single integrated circuit(chip) computers, play critical roles in al-most all instrumentation and control systems.

What exactly a microcontroller is? A microcontroller is a self-contained single chip processor with all constituent subsystems of a larger computer system. Within the confines of a single integrated circuit, it contains I/O capa-bility, a time base, a timing system, memory, an Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU) providing the capability to perform arithmetic and logic processes ,and also the capability to generate output control signals. A microcontroller is usu-ally employed when a moderate amount of local intelligence is required within a given applica-tion. It is best suited for applications involving integer-based processing although floating point calculations are possible.

A bit of introduction to different families:8051: These microcontrollers are old but still trendy and most of the companies fabricate these microcontrollers. The older types of 8051 have 12 clocks per instruction that make it slug-

gish where as the recent 8051 have 6 clocks per instruction. The 8051 micro-controller do not have an in-built memory bus and A/D converters.

PIC: Programmable interface controller is usually referred to as PIC. They are slightly older than 8051 microcontrollers but excel because of their small, low pin count devices. They perform well and are affordable.

AVR: The AVR is a modified Harvard ar-chitecture 8-bit RISC single-chip micro-controller, which was developed by Atmel in 1996. The AVR was one of the first microcontroller families to use on-chip flash memory for program storage, as op-posed to one-time programmable ROM, EPROM, or EEPROM used by other mi-crocontrollers at the time.

To know more about the microcontrollers and cool projects and bots made using it follow our magazine.


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9National Institute of Technology, Rourkela

Bytes • Vol 1 Issue 1

8

Since it’s our first edition, lets “dig”

into the very origin of the word “CYBORG” or cybernetic organ-ism and how it, which was once a fiction, is becoming a reality.

1. Who coined the term?- Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.In September 1960, he coined the word “cyborg” to describe an emerging hybrid of machines and man.The word ap-peared in an article called “Cyborgs and

Space,” in the journal Astronautics’ Sep-tember 1960 issue. Just to be precise, here’s how the word was introduced: “For the exogenously ex-tended organizational complex function-ing as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term ‘Cy-borg.’” wrote Clynes and his co-author Nathan Kline.

2. What was the initial purpose?-“Cyborgs - Frees Man to Explore.”Manfred E. Clynes

Project Jacquard

How about a jacket that is also a touch screen and integrates itself with your other

gadgets. Well that’s barely scratching the sur-face of Project Jacquard. It is a new system for weaving technology into fabric, transforming everyday objects, like clothes, into interactive surfaces. Project Jacquard will allow design-ers and developers to build connected, touch-sensitive textiles into their own products. To cre-ate the yarn, Project Jacquard uses conductive yarn to create fabric panels that can be used to interact with a device. Conductive metal alloys are braided together with fabric fibers to make a product that is strong, but still feels like yarn. This project’s prototype was unveiled at the Google I/O conference 2015. It seems Google has literally starting weaving itself in our lives.

Project Ara

Project Ara was also started much before the others and this is the project which

made ATAP famous. In the present Smartphone age everyone has a unique requirement. But with fixed specifications one has to pick one, even if it has or doesn’t have a feature due to lack of options. Project Ara is an initiative that aims to develop an open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones.As they say, “A phone is a part of it. Part of it is a phone.” The platform will include a structural frame or endoskeleton that holds smartphone modules of the owner’s choice, such as a dis-play, camera or an extra battery allowing users to swap out malfunctioning modules or upgrade individual modules as innovations emerge. Already ready for mass production you can soon have your own customized smartphone!

and Nathan S. Kline proposed the term “cyborg” for humans augmented to make them more suited to space flight. “The purpose of the Cy-borg, as well as his own homeostatic systems, is to provide an organizational system in which such robot-like problems are taken care of automatically and un-consciously, leaving man free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel,” Clynes and Kline wrote.

3. Who was the first legally recog-nised cyborg?-Neil Harbisson, in the year 2004. He is the first person in the world with an antenna implanted in his skull. His antenna allows him to perceive visible and invisible colours such as infrared and ultraviolet via audible vibrations in his skull, as well as receive im-ages, videos, music or phone calls directly into his head. His wifi enabled antenna also allows him to receive colours from satellites

Digging the Roots #1: “Cyborg”

and hear extrater-restrial colours from space. Learn more about him from his talk at TEDGlobal 2012.

4. Were there cy-borgs before him?-Yeah! Lots!In 1997, Philip Ken-nedy, a scientist and physician designed the world’s first hu-man cyborg named Johnny Ray. Kennedy embedded a Neu-rotrophic Electrode near the part of Ray’s brain so that Ray would be able to have

some movement back in his body. In the year 2000, a private researcher William Dobelle implanted a single-array BCI containing 68 electrodes onto a person’s visual cortex and succeeded in producing phos-phenes, the sensa-tion of seeing light. The system included cameras mounted on glasses to send signals to the implant. In 2002, Dobelle’s second generation implant marked one of the earliest com-mercial uses of BCIs.

The second genera-tion device used a more sophisticated implant enabling better mapping of phosphenes into coherent vision.

5. Who was the first women cy-borg?- Claudia Mitchell She became the first woman to become a cyborg when she was outfitted with a bionic limb. The limb is connected to her nervous sys-tem, allowing her to control it with her

mind. The range of motion is extraordi-nary, allowing her to use it for “cook-ing, for holding a laundry basket, for folding clothes — all kinds of daily tasks.”

TECH-BITS

Meet Alphabet : Google’s new Parent CompanyGoogle announced the formation of an umbrella company called Alphabet, naming Sundar Pichai as the new CEO of Google. Co-founders Page and Brin took over as CEO and President of Alphabet respectively.

Project Ara delayed!The first Project Ara hardware was due to be trialled in Puerto Rico this year, but now the trial has been pushed to atleast 2016 and will now take place in US.

Android M is now officially Marshmallow

Android M though not set to be released until this fall, but Google along with announcing its name is now all set to release the final developer preview along with final Android 6.0 SDK.


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Cyborg


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Hundreds of new faces, sprawling young minds, and an overflow of zeal in the environ-ment, this is what decorates the first day of our college every year. NITR adores the vigor, freshness and immaturity of the new comers and tries to give them the warm-est welcome from the very first day of their arrival. Our college is having a vast num-ber of clubs in almost all areas of interests to help freshers get the best out of their time. Cyborg, one among them, is a Robotics and Automation club. Cyborg, started eight years ago, has seen brilliant minds working dedicatedly for the club for years.

Camera based Gesture Control

Self-Balancing Bot

Face Recognition

Handwriting Recognition

Our Mini Projects

Cyborg

With the depletion of non-renewable re-sources, time has come to explore the various uses of the alternatives. Not to be left behind, Cyborg has made a vehi-cle or kart that runs on electrical energy. The Ecokart is driven by a motor con-suming 1.5kW that is powered by an Am-aron battery (12V, 35Ah). The material for the chassis is an alloy of steel, for the body it is Mild Steel sheet of thickness 2 mm and for the base and the front cover it’s Aluminium sheet. The Dashboard is particularly striking because, along with the usual speedometer and battery-level indicator, there is a monitor displaying the: Seat-belt indicator, Obstacle detec-tor, Reverse gear, Temperature sensor (Dht22) and Inertial Measurement Unit Indicator. The kart has been designed

and fabricated keeping in mind the safety of the driver. If you haven’t been fascinated by the kart yet then wait till you read about the innovations that Cy-borg implemented in this ordinary kart, making it definitely NOT ordinary! The driver is warned by a buzzer each time there is a vehicle within the proximity of 2 meters. The location of the vehicle can be tracked. The tracking data is then uploaded to the web server which can be monitored from anywhere out-side the track. Speed, Temperature, Tilt and other such data are remotely monitored. Also Instruction for stopping the vehicle can be shown on the dash-board in case of emergency!

Our Major Projects

EcoKart

Uses databases of hand written characters to convert images/scanned pages of writ-ings into digital scripts. Already used for restoration of old handwritten files into digi-tal ones. Many famous computer programs

like adobe acrobat and Nitro Pro also support OCR, but they make many mistakes and there is lot of room for improvement.

Using databases of stored facial informa-tion a computer is able to recognize a per-son in a live feed or and image. Already used in surveillance, police investigations,

and keeping track of employees in of-fices. Maybe the first thing that pops up in your mind is Facebook auto tag feature.

Using IMU that combines gyroscopic and accelerometer data using spatial filters, we define the orientation of some objects in 3D space. PID controls enables the bot

to self-adjust its orientation to prevent it from falling. Such control schemes are already used in Aerial autopilots and satellite stabilisation.

Using everyday cameras installed in lap-tops/mobile phones or home security cam-er smart hand gestures can control various objects around the room. Already being

used in many laptops and smart-phones but far from perfect, this can be improved for more robust automa-tion purposes.

Robocon, short for Robotic Contest, is an interesting game-cum-intellectual ex-ercise for budding engineers and their enthusiastic instructors, determined to

innovate and create machines for pro-ducing desired results. Participation in this activity is an end-to-end competi-tive experience, from designing of a

system of robots programmed to perform according to rules of the game played on a high precision technical Contest Area to scoring a victory beating the competitors; all this according to a Theme declared by the Host Country. International Robo-cons are mainly sponsored by Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union which includes Door-darshan of India as a member which has

been organizing all activities in India for last nine years with collaboration with MIT Group of Institutions Pune, India. The theme for Robocon India 2015 was Badminton playing with semi-automated bots. Cyborg has been representing NITR for the last two years in this prestigious competi-tion at Pune.

Robocon

Do you have any technical write-ups that you want to get featured in Bytes? Do you want your product to be advertised in Bytes?Any suggestions, comments and criticisms are all welcome. Just drop a

mail at [email protected]. We are all ears!


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Tired of carrying your entangled wires of your charger all around? Feeling chained within the radius of your phone charger? Then here is just what you need. When you need a little more juice to make that last phone call, uncap the Smartphone Power Boost Pen. This handy device is more than just an elegant writing instrument — it’s a portable backup power source that charg-es your iPhone, Galaxy, Blackberry or any other Android smartphone. Simply separate the two halves and connect the universal charging cable, with its built-in Lightning, 30-Pin and Micro USB adapters. Charge indicator lights show your progress.

Geek-o-Gadgets

It is a magical cube that is totally virtual. With this tiny portable gadget now you can have the virtual keyboard wherever you are! What more a geek would want other than this? A little goes a long way. It’s so small, yet so big in a single flick of a switch. Epic is the most compact, data input solu-tion ever. Named Epic, it works with virtu-ally any Bluetooth-enabled device through simplified pairing.

Magic Cube Laser Virtual Projection Keyboard

Bluesmart is the world’s first smart hand lug-gage. It does all sorts of nifty stuff: You can lock and unlock it with your phone; it will automati-cally seal up when you’re not close to it; it has a built-in scale to help you manage airline bag-gage weight regulations; and it has an integrat-ed battery with enough power to recharge your phone six times over. Oh, and did I mention it also has an integrated GPS, so you always know where your bag is?

World’s First SmartConnected Carry-On

Are you a game lover? Then this geek de-vice will be adored by you. Through this tunable gaming mouse, elevate your game with surface tuning calibration, weight/bal-ance adjustment, DPI shifting, and 11 pro-grammable buttons.

Logitech Tunable Gaming Mouse with Fully Customization Surface

Prynt is a smartphone case that lets you instantly print a picture. It also has an app called Lively that adds an ex-tra layer to that memory: You can record a video, and the augmented reality in the app plays that video when you hold the phone over the printed image. It’s like photos from the Harry Potter Universe, but in real life. They have a life of their own!

Prynt: Instant Snaps


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Phoenix RobotixA lodestar in entrepreneurship

Keeping the above thought in his mind Mr. Amiya Kumar Samantaray (B.Tech

EI, 2014) started his epic journey in the field of entrepreneurship after leaving his enticing job offer from Verizon. With the passage of time, projects as well as pas-sionate individuals started joining and the dots began connecting. Amongst them was Mr. Agniva Das (pursuing B.Tech, EE) who became the cofounder of their startup Phoenix Robotix. With the mission to have their sole focus on joining and connecting the existing setup, processes, resources,

“Why do we rise? So that we can learn to pick others up”people, government and the world in one framework of cloud connected technology, developed network and excellent services at the disposal of the users and with the vision to aim and realize state-of-the-art technological development and integrate them within their products, processes and services and in order to create optimized operation, management and experience, the foundation of a new milestone in the field of entrepreneurship was set by Phoe-nix Robotix.

“Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care”

With the above statement of saving the people from the growing hassles of

environmental pollution, Phoenix Robotix designed a magnificent and intriguing on-line environment quality monitoring sys-tem which measured the pollution param-eters according to the industrial standards and was named as AURASSURE; the amalgamation of “aura”(atmosphere) and “assure”(guarantee) depicting an assur-ance of a healthy and safe environment. The real-time data from the system is stored in a remote central server via GPRS and cloud storage technology. For instan-taneous visual access, the real-time data can be displayed on the LED screen via RF technology. The live data from the sys-tem can also be accessed and analyzed through the online portal provided by them.In their endeavor of online pollution moni-toring systems they have a series of prod-ucts, namely: AURASSURE air, AURAS-SURE weather and AURASSURE water.

Their prior focus is on AURASSURE air which is a mesh network of pollution moni-toring units. These units measure the ambi-ent air quality parameters which include the concentration of effluent gases and particu-late matters. Phoenix Robotix, with its nifty innovative product has efficiently targeted the futuristic disruptive technologies like In-ternet of Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Aided by the strict imple-mentation of the guidelines and regulations framed by the Government of India to check the pollution level of effluent industries and under scrupulous mentoring by Prof. S.K.Sarangi (Director NIT Rourkela), Prof. K. K. Mohapatra and Prof. B. B. Biswal, Phoenix Robotix has soared to new heights.Some of the other services offered by Phoenix Robotix includes cloud computing & data analytics, customized embedded solutions along with educational services.Phoenix Robotix was recently selected amongst the top 50 cherry-picked partici-

Phoenix Robotix aspires to bring the nation to the forefront of technological develop-

ment and innovation. Within 2016, they aim to see themselves as an advanced and com-petitive platform for innovation, research and development. Some of their ongoing projects include developing online vehicle tracking sys-

tem, connected LED box and smart pill box.Technological development propaga-tion and bringing India to the forefront of developing nations has always been the prior objective of Phoenix Robotix.Cyborg team wishes Phoenix robotix all the best for all their future endeavors.

pants among 1900+ participants from all over India in “Innovate for Digital India Challenge” hosted by the government of India, support-ed by Intel and Department of Science and Technology (DST) under the initiative by our honorable prime minister in order to build a

technologically advanced and developed nation. But this did not end here and Phoenix Robotix succeeded in securing position amongst the top 20 in challenge.

Graphene to the rescue

Today most of us are familiar with the ther-mal problems associated with the electron-

ic gadgets. Increasing the efficiency of these gadgets by eliminating their thermal problems has been an area of research for many years. In 2001, Pat Gelsinger, then vice president of Intel, noted that if the temperatures produced by the latest chips kept rising on their current path, they would exceed the heat of a nuclear reactor by 2005, and the surface of the sun by 2015.Fortunately, such thermal disaster was averted by slowing down the switching speeds in microprocessors, and by adopting multicore chip designs in which several processors run in parallel. Now the semiconductor industry has another thermal problem to sort out. As chip components for the electronic gadgets shrink, the copper wiring that connects them must shrink, too. And as these wires get thinner, they

heat up tremendously thus heating the electronic gadget. Almost half of the energy spent by the gadgets like mo-biles, tablets and laptops goes towards cooling of the device. Heating of these gadgets is hence a major predicament faced by the industry while attempting to add more processing power to cir-cuits and electronic gadgets. A group of researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden have success-fully developed an ingenious solution to this problem. According to the ar-ticle published in journal of Advanced Materials the solution is based upon a graphene film. Graphene has a heat dissipating effect on silicon based electronics. The team of researchers led by Chalmers Professor Johan Liu

Allotropic form of carbon comes to extricate us from thermal problems in electronic gadgets.

MEET ARDUINO ZERO

• One of its most important features is Atmel’s Embedded Debugger (EDBG), which provides a full debug interface without the need for additional hardware, significantly increasing the ease-of-use for software debugging. EDBG also supports a virtual COM port that can be used for device programming and traditional Arduino boot loader functionality.• The Zero is compatible with all Arduino shields that work at 3.3V and are compliant with the 1.0 Arduino pinout.• The board can operate on an external supply of 6 to 20 volts. If supplied with less than 7V, how-ever, the 5V pin may supply less than five volts and the board may be unstable. If using more than 12V, the voltage regulator may overheat and damage the board. The recommended range is 7 to 12 volts.• The Arduino Zero has a resettable polyfuse that protects your computer’s USB ports from shorts and overcurrent. Although most computers provide their own internal protection, the fuse provides an extra layer of protection. If more than 500 mA is applied to the USB port, the fuse will automatically break the connection until the short or overload is removed.• The maximum length and width of the Arduino Zero PCB are 2.7 and 2.1 inches respectively, with the USB connectors and power jack extending beyond the former dimension.

Warning: Unlike most Arduino boards, the Arduino Zero board runs at 3.3V. The maximum voltage that the I/O pins can tolerate is 3.3V. Applying voltages higher than 3.3V to any I/O pin could damage the board.

THE NEW BOARD JOINTLY DEVELOPED BY ARDUINO AND ATMEL


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reported exceptional outcomes while using gra-phene film on electronic circuits based on sili-con. They had earlier shown that graphene can have a cooling effect on silicon-based electron-ics, but the challenge was to stick a thick layer of graphene to silicon chips. They found the solu-tion by creating a strong covalent (silane) bond between the surface and the graphene film in a silicon based electronic component. Further the researchers could achieve 1600W/mK thermal conductivity levels with graphene coating. “This discovery opens the door to increased func-tionality and continues to push the boundaries when it comes to miniaturising electronics,” said Chalmers Professor Johan Liu who heads the international research project. Professor Liu also added that with increase in thermal capac-ity, graphene could find application in a wide variety of fields, for example the integration of

a graphene based film into microelectronic systems and devices such as highly efficient Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), lasers and radio frequency components for cooling purposes. A layer of graphene can reduce the working temperature in hotspots inside a processor by up to 25 percent – which can significantly ex-tend the working life of computers and other electronics. Graphene-based films could thus pave the way for faster, smaller and more en-ergy efficient high power electronics. A single layer of an allotrope of carbon has thus be-come the life changer in electronics industry. With such an amazing application of gra-phene, the wearables industry is also keenly looking forward to many new technological applications based upon this wonder material in the near future.

Estinno: EASTERN INNOVATIONSWe dream, They dare.

Let me ask you a question: How many times have you thought of making a tedious work easier and have actually worked on it? Well I heard a loud yes from one of the

high minds of Cyborg, Kirti Sai Shukla, a student of Electronics and Communication Engineering. The tale of Kirti dates back to October 2013. One day while he was busy doing his laundry, a simple thought flipped through his mind: Why not make this nasty thing easier? He kept this idea swirling around in his own mind until he met another of his kind Anurag Mishra, a student of Metallurgy and Materials Science, while trav-elling in a bus. The two people having similar ideas in their minds kept talking whole night. As fate would have it, they met another high mind of their kind amidst the NITR crowd, Mrityunjay Sharma, an Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering student, well known as an electronics maniac. The three musketeers decided to work together on small products of simple yet useful purpose out of the scraps. Their first product was a highly portable and affordable washing machine for students-Vortex. Their endless efforts in workshops and labs gave NITR one of its first successful projects by a group of undergraduate students. They received a funding of approximately INR 70,000 from TEQIP II of our institute. They dedicate their sincere thanks to Prof. S.S. Mahapatra, HOD of Mechanical Dept., and believe him to be their guardian angel. Other people to whom they owe their success to are, Prof. A. Swain, who is also Academic Advisor of Cyborg, and their Instructor Kishore Khujoor. It was due to the sincere efforts of these three young engineers that a company offered them up to 5 crore rupees for their first product. But having even bigger plans in their mind they went a step further and laid the foundation of Estinno: Eastern Innovation, a startup which has already grabbed a lot of attention all over India in different competitions and seminars. Kirti shoulders the responsibility of making the first hand plan of the projects and optimization of the prod-ucts, Mrityunjay is involved in the R&D sector of the company. Anurag looks after the marketing and strategies of the companies. The company has created around 10 smart projects such as: Vortex- The world’s smallest washing machine, Security locator- A unique security surveillance gadget, Smart Fan Regulator- An automatic fan speed regulator, Mother’s Helper- A one stop solution for a baby’s mother, and many more. This has made them popular enough to get a DST funding amounting to 5 lakh ru-pees. Another big fund came their way from MSME who recognized their potential and funded them with another 6.25 lakh rupees. Dreaming of creating one day, the Indian version of Jarvis, team Estinno seems to be the one making Impossible I-M-Possible! When asked to share a word especially for our readers, one of them cadidly quoted:

Dare to chase your dream. Once you start doing this,

everything else will start to fall into its place.

Cyborg wishes team Estinno All the Best for all their future endeavours.

National Institute of Technology, Rourkela


18

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has long since intrigued the human mind as to

whether the concept of a machine smart-er than humans is conceivable. We have been awed, fascinated, and even troubled by sci-fi movies like The Matrix trilogy, The Terminator movies and such, most of them depicting that AI shall possibly be the down-fall of mankind. But can this theory really develop and then later evolve into reality? The first thing is to realize what sets Hu-man Intelligence apart from an AI, and un-derstand what makes Human Intelligence so magnificent. Humans have been able to adapt to their changing environment, devise new ways to deal with a variety of problems, awareness of the outside world and of one’s thought process, and manipu-late their surroundings to their needs and hence solve their problems. The step to develop an AI, is to covert these features – adaptation, awareness, metacognition and manipulation-to code. But as difficult as it may seem, perhaps it is not and baby steps, possibly unwittingly, have already been taken towards this end result.‘We're bound to spawn computers smarter than us in the next ninety years or so. So we may as well start hoping they have our best interests at heart’, says Wake author Robert J. Sawyer. This gives rise to a more important aspect of this colossal development of an AI that is, the possible outcomes, probably reper-cussions, down the line. Is it really going to be as devastating as it is portrayed in most of the movies that incorporate AI in them or

can we possibly design a benevolent AI, as depicted in the TV series Person of Inter-est created by Jonathan Nolan? Where on one hand, in recent news we had a Google AI chatbot threatening its master that has been pacified by AI enthusiasts by saying that the AI chatbot was probably unaware that it was being snarky and threatening to its creator, on the other hand, one cannot help but wonder – what if an AI decides to wipe out the human race and is probably unaware that it has reached a catastrophic conclusion? There is always been the fear of the unknown but that has never deterred mankind from reaching out into the dark and stumble upon the elusive. Similarly, AI is also an unknown realm that has, more or less, proven to be tricky – as to its probable nature towards presumably less intelligent humans; but it will, on no account, dampen the spirits of those pursuing matters in this field. It remains to be seen whether any theory, conclusive enough, can help predict as to how the first AI is ever developed – some Eureka moment of a single brain or loads of constructive work spanning gen-erations or is it already at work amidst the busy schedule of our lives, slowly gaining experience of the human nature and feed-ing on our behavior, to potentially becom-ing a Super Intelligence beyond human control. Fingers crossed!

Artificial Intelligence Humanity's Last Big Thing

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