Long, long ago, in a jungle far, far away, there were a bunch of Engineers who were well trained in the ways of, well erm.. Engineering, and a bigger bunch who had to be enlightened. Most of the unenlightened had been taken from their lives young and taught to focus their minds and souls on the one true goal of ending up in this jungle or one of the few others that were spread around the planet. But the ways of the world were changing. The thirst for knowledge of Engineering had lost drive, and the learning of its myriad ways had reached a standstill. Of the few among both tribes who did worry about Engineering there grew a nagging disquiet. …

Hence were born the Spirit of Engineering projects or the SOEs of IIT Madras. What began as an effort to help the student population reconnect with Engineering ( enough of the Star Wars allegory I say…) have grown into some of the most enterprising and absolutely awesome, for want of a better word, ‘things’ that Shaastra and IITM have to offer. It is only when you begin to fabricate things do the real challenges and the fun (which is woefully missed by many of the unenlightened tribe) of Engineering come to the fore. Over the last two years, with the effort of a very dedicated but comparatively small bunch of students and professors, several of the projects have materialized and generated a lot of sheer awesomeness. Some of the most noteworthy include the Vertical Take off and Landing aircraft (VTOL), the Ornithopter (A mechanized bird), the self balancing cycle (with a pretty expensive laptop on the seat mind you), the desalination plant, the biodiesel plant, the automated control system mounted on an aerial vehicle (or Want To Fly 2)

Now what with the advent of CFI (finally…) where the techies have all they need including a place to crash and funding from IC&SR the SOEs have taken off big time. With immense enthusiasm from the freshie and sophomore batches a grand total of 13 SOE projects are being drilled, sawed, soldered and fevicolled together in the sacred halls of CFI. These range from improved versions of VTOL and WTF (:D) to speech synthesizers (remember Stephen Hawking? ) to automated cars to GPS enabled helmets that call for help after accidents to “A kind of craft that hovers but not a hover craft ” . There also a myriad of robots being planned including obstacle avoiders, spies, housekeepers, robots that can change shape and function and creepy and complicated six legged ones that can well creep over difficult terrain. Doing our bit for the environment there is also a proposed algal bio-diesel plant and a fuel cell powered bicycle. Phewwww… best of luck we say.