Innovative engineers find solutions to challenges that arise in daily life by utilizing technology. They are powerful because they think creatively, according to Gonsalves.
Much of our daily life is an engineering marvel, from the phone in your palm to the historic Chandrayaan 3 that launched from Sriharikota last month.
Engineering has a positive impact on society and improves our quality of life. Without power, the Internet, and smartphones, it is impossible for us to imagine living. Electric vehicles will soon replace gasoline and diesel vehicles and enter our daily lives. These instances all make inventive and imaginative use of technology.
By training to be creative engineers, you can participate as a young student in the next technology revolution that changes society.
Innovative engineers locate issues with daily living and use technology to provide fixes. They are powerful because they are creative thinkers. In India, the majority of students who earn a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) or Bachelor of Technology (BTech) degree are not prepared to be creative engineers. Many of them quit engineering altogether or start working in mundane occupations.
The fortunate few land positions at businesses that manufacture goods. Through several years on the work, they eventually develop creativity and practical abilities.
In a nutshell, there are four steps in engineering.
Determine a social need first. Create a solution using technology second. Third, put the solution into action. Deliver it to the customers and make sure they are happy last.
Let’s look at a few instances.
Students in their third year of engineering at the Government College of Engineering in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, made the decision to address the discomfort of riding a bike in the heat.
The Peltier module in the helmet they created uses electricity to cool the interior. They used the helmet while riding their bikes as the initial users. Individually, each of these pupils is an inventive engineer.
Four IIT Mandi final year students realized that a manual check of the roof was necessary before installing solar panels in a home, which was time-consuming and expensive.
They then used image processing of satellite pictures to create a revolutionary automated approach. They founded The Solar Labs as their own business after graduating. Four years later, a prestigious solar panel manufacturer paid a significant sum to purchase their firm.
The crucial question is now: How does one become an inventive engineer?
The good news is that while pursuing your BTech, you can also train to become an inventive engineer. You will study a variety of scientific and technology topics in BTech that are crucial to effective engineering.
Developing technical common sense through real-world application is equally vital. Young boys and girls start tinkering with gadgets at a young age in nations like the US and Germany that are leaders in the production of technological products.
But the majority of Indians do not have this upbringing. This is something you can make up for in your BTech.
Technical groups at your college might let you use technology in real-world settings. These include, among others, car clubs and programming groups.
Make sure your device is practical for some clients when you join these clubs. They ought to use it and provide feedback.
During their BTech years, students have the opportunity to develop, create, and deploy meaningful products thanks to initiatives like IIT Madras’ LEAP program. The Government Engineering College in Idukki, Kerala, assigned a group of LEAP students the task of creating a robotic feeder for people with disabilities. They created a slim robotic arm that can lift a spoonful of food to the user’s lips from a bowl. It moves under the control of proximity sensors.
Start practicing right away if you want to become a good inventive engineer. Identify, Design, Implement, Deliver is the key slogan.
You might wonder why certain courses, like Chemistry, are required for your BTech degree. You could say that they have no bearing on your goals. Technology is always evolving. For instance, until 2000, Machine Learning (ML) was primarily of interest to a small number of academic geeks. Nobody could find employment in the industry.
However, ML is the popular field right now. It might not be in five, ten, or twenty years. The field of chemistry may be the most lucrative!
ML uses sophisticated statistical models on massive data sets to learn information about issues like global warming and sports. Statistics, modeling, and coding—which many people learn—make only 10% of good machine learning. Domain expertise is the missing 90%. Most ML “experts” just have a basic understanding of the remaining 90%.
Therefore, by acquiring fundamental knowledge during your BTech, you can position yourself as a sought-after 100 percent knowledgeable ML expert.
Experience is how AI and ML learn. It searches through a sizable amount of training data gathered from the real world for patterns. An unfamiliar situation is matched with a previously learned pattern. As a result, challenges for which a lot of data is already available are highly suited to AI/ML.
As a result, many fields of cutting-edge research are not compatible with AI/ML. Chandrayaan 3 is one instance where there isn’t any training data. The project’s success heavily depends on the creative human engineers.
