A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to participate in the annual International Design Contest held at MIT, 80 contestants from nine countries participated. The countries represented were Thailand, China (two universities), Japan (two universities), Korea, Brazil, USA, Morocco, Singapore and France. There was a third university from China (Tsinghua) that couldn’t get visas in time to be there. There was one participant of Indian origin from America. As a faculty member of a leading American university, where I had taught product development and design for over 10 years, and now on leave in India, I realised the conspicuous absence of India. This was especially notable given the representation from some aspiring global players from Asia and, of course, Brazil, countries with whom India, Indian products and Indian labour will compete over the next century.
The contest was called the Robohacks to signify and replicate the most famous hacks that were done at MIT using robots on a wooden model of the main MIT building with a dome and the infinite corridor. The four hacks were very famous acts of “friendly vandalism” done on the MIT and the Harvard campus. First, an MIT police car (a fake one) was placed on the top of the dome. The second was a balloon that came out of the football ground before a Harvard game with MIT written all over with lipstick, so that the letters would not be distorted as it was blown up. The third involved dropping of small super bouncing balls from the top of the building on to Killian Court, while the fourth was the theft of a Cannon from Caltech that appeared on the MIT campus. In the contest the cannon had to be pulled from its place on the board to the side of the team. The contest was to replicate as many of these acts in the scale model using robots to accomplish these tasks in 75 seconds to get the highest points.
The teams were given limits on total weight of the robots and total energy consumption, and could use the predetermined material and devices (servo motors, battery packs, wheels) allocated to them. They had access to machine shops with lathes, 3D printing and machine shop staff to provide them with guidance and help once the pieces were designed. They had a maximum of four hours of machine shop staff time per team. The students could use the machines themselves and fabricate whatever they wanted. There were other rules that were also set up. All of them were briefed on safety procedures and the instructors and staff were on the lookout to ensure no safety rules were violated, reminding them of their responsibility to follow safe practices.
Often in these contests the teams compete as countries against each other. This time, Professor Dan Frey of MIT, the convener, continued the experiment, started by an MITian Dr Harry West in an earlier contest, by which teams had participants from different countries. No team had two people from the same country — to mimic the nature of engineering and design in the globalised world today. I spent my time walking around talking to the teams, helping as and when I could, and participating in mid-course design reviews. The teams confronted language barriers using Google to translate their words, often laughing at the translations, gaining an experience in learning about how those from other countries think and work, and thus how to transcend culture, language and practices. Amazingly, participants did not hesitate to work with their hands, working from 7 a m till 11 p m everyday with shorter weekend hours during the two-week competition.
The students both competed with each other and cooperated by talking to their countrymen to seek clarifications and dipping into their knowledge. They balanced each other’s competences. The teamwork and camaraderie that developed will transcend the experience through social media that dominate their world. Who won or lost is irrelevant as all of them won.
While living in India for the last three years, I see and hear about how India’s best and brightest seek work in financial companies and IT shops. The news touts their salaries as the sign of success — with little thought about their country’s prowess in designing things for their countrymen. Meanwhile, Singapore opens a university focused on technology and design with MIT, with faculty from the sciences, technology and social sciences looking at the future of design for society. Can Indian engineering students use their hands to saw, cut and feel the materials that make their designs work and win in the competitive world? Do they even aspire to be the best designers in the world, or do they just measure their worth in the money they earn in the first years after college shuffling numbers in air-conditioned offices for those in Wall and Dalal Streets?
I wondered as I walked through the designs, seeing the passion of these students, hailing from countries that aspire to be the best — will an Indian university ever compete in these contests, learning from failures rather than hiding them and punishing those responsible, to make things that work and make a better country?
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The late George Buggiliaro, an innovative educator and former president of the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, captured the social embedding of engineering in his book Engineering as a Social Enterprise. Until India recognises: (a) the importance of design; (b) that engineers are really disguised sociologists who shape our lives for good or bad; and (c) that engineers’ consciousness of real human needs is paramount to their contribution to society and their country, there will not be footpaths for pedestrians or sanitation for the poor. I hope that when others attend the next international design contest, they see a team from an Indian university and not just persons of Indian origin from other countries.
The writer is on the faculty at the engineering school in Carnegie Mellon University and is on leave as a researcher at the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy in India.
These views are personal