Shaastra

Shaastra is the annual technical festival of Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Chennai, India. The Sanskrit word ‘Shaastra’ means science and the festival accordingly consists of various science and technology based competitions, symposia, lectures, video conferences, exhibitions, demonstrations and workshops. The festival is traditionally held over four days and four nights during the first week of January. It has so far seen ten editions, having started in its current avatar in the year 2000. Shaastra attracts participation from all over India, and seeks to provide collegiate students with a platform to showcase their scientific and engineering talents. Shaastra is entirely student managed and holds the distinction of being the first such event in the world to be ISO 9001:2000 certified for implementing a Quality Management System.

History

In 1996, Prof. R Natarajan took over as Director and instituted several committees to study several ways of improving IIT Madras. One of his committees, the Committee on new mechanisms of Teacher Learning Interactions, was tasked with coming up with ways of inspiring students. This committee, headed by Prof. Ajit Kumar Kolar, came up with a suggestion to create a technology festival in IIT Madras. Also, Prof. U R Rao, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Institute, in 1997, was impressed by the scale and ambition of the newly inaugurated Techfest at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and on his behest, several students came together and staged 'Pragmaa', a technical festival, in 1997, and then in 1999. Despite the inclusion of various technical events including tech quizzes, demonstrations and paper presentations that attempted to get participants interested in applying their technical knowledge, it remained low-key .

Following the 1999 edition, a group of individuals decided to stage a bigger technical festival that made tech cool and generated interest and enthusiasm among all IITians. This group, propelled by different motivations, took upon the title of 'Core Group' (a practice which continues till today) and engaged themselves in planning and organizing the festival. After deciding on the name Shaastra, and the events - different kinds of quizzes, demonstrations, lectures - and some food and fun, they convinced the rest of the campus that this was worth their time and they should help in the organization. They decided to have it in March, after the excitement of Saarang had died down, but before people started getting nervous about the end-semester exams .

Students applied for and took on the role of Coordinators for various events. A set of colleges around the country was targeted and the amount required to run the event was raised through sponsorships. The first edition was thus planned and took place starting 9 March 2000 .

Events: An Overview

A large number of events aimed to cater the needs of all the participants are organized during the four days the festival is held. The events can be broadly listed under several categories:

Aerofest

A relatively new mini festival at Shaastra that has been introduced to celebrate the achievements of the students who have dedicated their time for designing and developing innovations in flying.

It is a professionally choreographed show, wherein RC aircraft will be made to perform various aerial stunts. A few of the common exhibits include helicopter aerobatics, formation flying, 3D flying and music synchronized flying.
This event tests participants' aeromodelling and robotics skills. The AeroClub of IIT Madras will provide the participants with limited technical support. They are expected to build an autonomous vehicle using a few principles borrowed from Robotics.
Topgun is an RC flying competitive event where participants have to maneuver their planes and perform stunts.
This event aims at testing aeromodelling expertise of the participants. This requires the building of an aircraft from scratch and showcasing its maneuvering capabilities on the arena.
Participants will be given some fundaes about making Paper planes. They will be given A4 sheets and asked to make a plane whose objective would be flying it for the maximum possible time.
Wright design is a design and build event which gives you the opportunity to bring out the best of the aero modeler in you think tank and build a glider. The glider shall be launched by using variable angle slingshot mechanism launcher provided by coordinators.
Business events

Shaastra 2014 ventured into new territories by introducing a host of business events. An opportunity for students to explore the non-engineering world, where intuition and experience rules over formulae and theorems.

A consulting based case study event where a team has to crack a case and present its solution to a panel of judges from the consulting sector.
A finance based case study event where a team has to crack a case and present its solution to a panel of judges from the finance sector.
A managerial event involving a written questions round, group discussion round and finally a presentation in front of a panel of judges.
Programming

A number of events based on coding feature prominently in Shaastra. The common ones include:

A coding event which includes writing C -programs and algorithms. The event is conducted online which has duration of 5 hours and submissions to the problems will be automatically checked.
Tests basic logic skills along with pattern analysis and recognition as the participants play with the code, identify the patterns and decipher the code
A programming event with questions ranging across different topics of Computer Science. The first will be a round based on algorithms. The second will involve web designing.
A two round event where participant's debugging skills will be tested.
The event comprises participants getting to know the fundamentals about FOSS from students who have been contributing to Open Source projects. Dedicated hack-nights are conducted to help the participants apply the gained knowledge by hacking a variety of Open Source Software.
Its all about writing a computer program (Bot) to play a game. A basic sample bot will be provided. Participants have to code the logic of how the bot chooses what move to make.
An event in which you have to solve an Obfuscate Code, which is a source or machine code that has been made difficult to understand for humans.
Spotlight Events

This group of events involves engineering tasks that require innovative yet viable solutions. Some of the common ones are:

This event presents the challenge of planning sustainable growth of cities. It involves a group discussion as well as a discussion with a panel of judges based on their submitted entry.
The event paper presentation acts as a great platform for the amateur scientists to showcase their research work from various departments.
It is one of the most prestigious events at Shaastra, consisting of problem statements drawn up from varied engineering disciplines by major technology firms.
An event for students of Std.11 and 12. Students selected by their schools will participate in the activities designed for them at Shaastra.
A signature event that sparks a flame of change in the minds of youth thereby grooming the leaders of our future. Shaastra 2014's theme was “Reinventing the Agricultural Sector for the Future”.
A design competition, in which a team has to come up with a design for a technological problem in rural India. The best design would be implemented in villages where they need.
Design and Build

These events test the practical skill and workmanship of the participants in addition to their theoretical knowledge and designing abilities. The common ones include:

The event, as the name suggests, requires complicated contraptions (essentially Rube Goldberg machines) to be built to perform apparently simple tasks under given set of constraints.
This event focuses on the application of the principles of motors, IC engines in particular, in various given problem statements.
The event tests the ability of teams to churn out great designs from heaps of scrap.
A staple at Shaastra, it provides participants a platform to showcase their talent at robotics. Events in the past include Operation Delta, Gold Rush, Behind the Enemy Lines and more. These frequently involve real-time image processing and Automated Robotics with the use of sensors. This is also claimed to be the biggest event of Shaastra
A multidisciplinary event which examines the expertise of all engineers in both theoretically and hands-on challenges will be posed.
Department Flagship
This event consists of water boats build by students, equipped with blasting mechanisms that battle against the oncoming waves along with few interesting set of showdowns, all in one huge pool.
An event for the civil engineering minds across the country. teams have to build their model by assembling the prefabricated components of their bridge
Tests your logic ,science and deductive skills. The event will test: Blood typing, Fingerprint lifting and matching. Handwriting analysis and forgery
Structure your ideas into a well-defined 3D model. Prepare 3-D CAD models of their design in any 3-D modelling software (Autodesk Inventor,Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks, CATIA ,etc).
Provides the platform for the aspiring electrical engineers to unveil their circuit–designing skills.
Quizzing event based on basic 12th class chemistry knowledge along with some general knowledge regarding past and present advancements in the field.
Involve
This event focuses on creativity and craftsmanship. Solve a fresh problem statement each day to build a model of a real world entity for a stipulated time of two hours using ice cream sticks, straws, glue and other household items.
This is an event that will test your skills on solving a rubik's cube. There are eleven events going to be conducted at shaastra cube open.
Puzzles will cover a wide range of topics and will test your proficiency in logic, reasoning and mathematics.
An event which will host a wide variety of problems ranging from modeling simple actions of nature to complex state of the art engineering.
Quizzes
An annual quizzing battle-royale where participants exercise their grey cells on a wide variety of topics, ranging from light sabers to the Collatz conjecture and everything in between.
A quizzing event where questions asked are related to day to day phenomena ranging from engineering to medical science, from mathematics to even theoretical physics.
A quiz with questions on the history of automobiles to the future of it and everything that lies in between.
A quizzing event for young budding engineers. The winning teams of the Shaastra Junior Quizzes conducted in over schools in 15 cities over the last one year come for the National Finals at Shaastra
Online Events

Online counterparts of various popular events are conducted at Shaastra. This is to facilitate participation of students across the world unable to make it to the events. The common ones conducted include Online Quiz, Online Puzzle Championship, Online Programming Contest, Online Science Fiction Writing and Online Math Modelling. These generally include problem sets uploaded online and answers have to be sent in by the participants within the stipulated deadline.

Workshops

Shaastra includes a large number of workshops conducted on a wide range of topics. They give the participants a working knowledge or experience of various branches of engineering. Workshops in the past have been on Cinematography, Embedded Linux, Tensegrity, Smart Materials, Ornithopter, Network Security, Hovercraft, Chuck Glider, Android and more.

Lectures and Video Conferences

Shaastra draws various distinguished people in various technical fields from all over the world for making guest lectures, either in person or via video conference. These lectures and demonstrations aim to introduce students to the cutting-edge research happening in various fields, and serve as educational forums that encourage interaction between collegiate students and academia and industry.

Some notable personalities who delivered lectures at recent editions of Shaastra:

Shaastra Sampark

Going by the name Sparsh erstwhile, Sampark is a 'mini Shaastra' that is used to publicize the fest in places where it is relatively less popular. It comprises a lot lesser events, mostly only robotics, puzzle championship, junkyard wars, and some more.

It has previously been conducted in Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Surat.

Previous Editions

Specific additions to the general set of events mentioned above and certain memorable achievements of the previous editions are listed below:

Shaastra 2014

With the theme Breaking Boundaries, Shaastra 2014[1] returned in its 15th edition, bringing it with an experience of innovation, competition and learning that has become its hallmark over the years. The 15th edition of Shaastra took place from 4 January to 7 January giving rise to a grander show than the previous years, with 52 events spread across four days.[2]

The challenge was to build an all terrain capable of traversing on moon's surface. The winner's rover design at Shaastra 2014 got an opportunity to go the moon as a rover design of Team Indus that is taking part in an International Google Lunar X prize competition.
A confluence of the best minds from industry, academicians and students participated in this expo, which showcased the best research from across the various IITs. In a world driven by new and innovative research, this revolutionary initiative contributed to changing the face of research in India.
True to its theme, Shaastra broke several Limca World records, an Asia record this year and many more national records in varied fields-Rubik’s Cube solving, quadrotor with maximum flight time, first virtual band and for the largest hologram. In fact, Shaastra Cube Open was declared the largest Cubing event in Asia by WCA(World Cube Association)
The first-ever fully student-run technical show in India returned bigger and better. Envisage 2.0 wowed packed audiences who were spellbound by the wonderful amalgamation of technology and art that showed that science can be entertaining as well.
It acted as a common platform for the industry, academia and students to interact, learn and be inspired, followed by the launch of the second edition of IIT Madras Research Magazine "Immerse". The event had the unique distinction of bringing undergraduates and postgraduates together through panel discussions, lectures followed by networking session with stalwarts of various industries like Mr. Ananth Krishnan, CTO of Tata Consultancy Services and Bala Bhardwaj, MD of Boeing(India) etc.
Boasting some of the finest minds from across the world, the lecture series at Shaastra was a truly unparalleled experience for many. Among the luminaries speaking at Shaastra were Richard Stallman, John Adler, Manoj Pant, Anant Agarwal, Dr.J.V.Yakhmi, Amitabh Shah - CEO of Yuva Unstoppable, Bikash Sinha, S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan, Rajamanohar, Ajit Narayanan, Dave Lavery, Mr. Narsing Rao, Sharmila Bhattacharya, Gautam Narang and many more industrial lectures from General Electric, Eaton Corporation, IBM etc.
Being one of the largest School quiz in the country, Shaastra Junior Quiz is for everyone who has a basic knowledge of science. The aim of this event is to develop a quizzing culture at school level. The School quiz prelims were conducted in 15 cities of the country primarily targeting students from 8-12 grades, the winners of which competed against each other in the finals held during Shaastra 2014.

Shaastra 2013

Shaastra 2013 was held from 5 January to 8 January.

Shaastra 2011

Shaastra 2011 was held from 28 September to 2 October.

Shaastra 2010

Shaastra 2010 was held from 29 September to 3 October.

Shaastra 2009

With the theme "Rediscover Engineering", the Shaastra 2009 was held from 30 September to 4 October. The motto was to "Adapt, Evolve, Enjoy!" and various events were planned in the same spirit. Marking two hundred years since Charles Darwin was born, it aimed to evolve into a festival that is all inclusive, budding engineers, young entrepreneurs, future policy makers and technocrats, and be more relevant to the problems faced by the society. To enable this, a new department Shaastra Evolve was created. The events under this vertical included:

* The IIT Madras Symposium
The 2009 IIT Madras Symposium saw partnerships with organizations like the World Bank Urban Strategy and TERI to create a platform for students to meet like-minded individuals and engage in a dialogue with academia and industry on the themes. The participants were presented with contemporary policy challenges and asked to work on policy recommendations. The focus-areas of the inaugural symposium were energy, urbanisation and finance, and the sessions were covered by live media.
* Start-up Showcase
This event aimed to promote innovation and entrepreneurship among students by providing them with an opportunity to seek mentorship, meet possible investors and to network. The Showcase aspired to support those with creative and practical business plans, to facilitate fresh thinking and encourage risk taking.
* DREAM [Disseminating Real Engineering And Minds]
This event desired to stage exciting innovations, bringing technology to the masses enabling them to encounter and experience the latest advances in varied fields of science.
* Shaastra Vishesh
Vishesh is the Shaastra closing ceremony and was envisaged as a platform for all Shaastra Event Winners to showcase their technical innovations and designs to the Industry and the Media.

Apart from the traditional events described above, a full-fledged Aerofest was held, as mentioned above, attracting huge audience levels. Also, a managerial event, Super Manager, where participants managed their own fictional IPL team, played consultants, hired team members, maximised assets and minimised tax returns, was held.

Shaastra 2008

Commemorating the 50th year of the establishment of IIT Madras, the edition was labelled Golden Jubilee Shaastra 2008 and witnessed many new initiatives. With the theme "Simplify Perfection", it was held from 1 October to 5 October, on an unprecedented scale. Apart from the traditional events, the highlights included:

* Shaastra Conclave
This was a gala Golden Jubilee initiative intended to be a forum for the best brains from diverse fields to congregate at Shaastra and express their opinions on technology and the contribution of the IITs to India and this world. Corporates, academicians and politicians were invited to debate comprehensively on the occasion. It was held in conjunction with the inauguration ceremony and was followed by a formal banquet.
* Shaastra Nights
Being hosted for the first time in the history of IIT Madras, it exposed students to the entertaining technology demonstrations like a laser show and a robotic show.
* F1 car at Shaastra
ING Group was one of the key sponsors for Shaastra 2008. As one of the major highlights of the fest, the Renault R28 F1 car was brought to the IIT campus and put on display for all the visitors to see.
* Golden Design Challenges
These were envisaged to be a set of challenging socially relevant engineering problems with far-reaching implications.
* Spirit of Engineering projects
More than ten ambitious student-driven projects that aimed to push the limits of engineering were undertaken. Some of them were tried for the first time in India. Many of them were successfully completed and exhibited.
* DRDO Exhibition
Several indigenously developed state-of-the-art weaponry and defence equipment were displayed in the "Shaastra - The Defence Exhibition". 13 DRDO labs came together to showcase their technology including the battle field surveillance radar, models of Agni, Prithvi, Brahmos missiles, Nishant (unmanned air vehicle), Lakshya (pilotless target aircraft) and missile subsystems.
* Industrial Open House
This was a novel initiative to strengthen the industry-student interaction by providing leading companies exhibition space on-campus during Shaastra to showcase their cutting-edge technology and innovative products.

Shaastra 2007

It attracted a lot more participation than the previous editions and claimed to be 'bigger and better'. This was the first Shaastra to have a theme, as suggested by Prof. Ashwin Mahalingam, and was based on global warming and energy. The Department Open Houses, with a mission to educate people from outside about what research and studies happen in the departments in IIT Madras, were organized for the first time in the history of Shaastra. There were many events organized for the first time in this edition, like the Rubik's Cube Workshop, the Design Challenges and others, which saw huge participation and which would become fixtures in the later editions. Thus, this edition marked a jump in the scale of the event

Shaastra 2006

The highlights included a robot demonstrated by the team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) at the finals of the robotics championships held as part of Shaastra 2006 . Standing 50 cm tall and weighing 2.5 kg, MANUS 1 human was a biped (robot) prototype developed for the study of human gait, motion and sensing. MANUS 1 had previously won several awards including the FIRA Robot World Cup at Germany 2006, the same event in Singapore in 2005, FIRA Robot World Cup Australia 2003 and the Singapore Robotics Games 2004. Also, a new event Junkyard Wars turned out to be extremely popular among the participants and went on to become a fixture at Shaastra.[8]

Shaastra 2005

The highlights included a solution to the chucking problem in cricket that won acclaim from the International Cricket Council for two IIT Madras students. Christened `Xiva', the software developed by Arun Manohar and A V Varun, students of Aerospace Engineering, could detect flex action of bowlers. It was an image-based flex detection system that alerted the umpire when a bowler bent his bowling elbow at an angle greater than 15 degrees or 'chucked'.[9] It was part of Industry Defined Problem [IDP] event.[10]

Shaastra 2004

This edition was held from 7 October to 10 October and got extensive media coverage for its various endeavours in robotics and Spirit of Engineering projects.

Shaastra 2003

This edition marked a milestone in the history of Shaastra when the fest was ISO 9001:2000 certified, the only student managed festival in the world to achieve the feat.

Shaastra 2002

The highlights of the edition was world's longest paper footbridge being constructed by the students of IIT Madras, as a part of the Spirit Of Engineering projects. The bridge with a total length of 11m and a height of 5m was made entirely out of 1800 newspapers and 250m of manila rope. The strength of the bridge was proved beyond doubt when more than 10 people with an average weight of 65kg walked over the bridge successfully.[11]

Shaastra 2001

The second edition of Shaastra was held from 21 February to 25 February 2001.

Shaastra 2000

This was the first edition of Shaastra and the fest was held starting 9 March. It claimed to be a festival for the engineering and management students, a "sumptuous spread of Innovation, Competition, Live Demonstrations, Online Events and other such food for thought".

The Shaastra Logo


The logo of the 2009 edition of Shaastra is a pair of dice having two dots on all its faces. This is a tribute to Albert Einstein's historic statement, "God does not play dice with the universe", which immortalized the concept of determinism. The logo is used by the organizers to signify that they leave nothing to chance. The dice will show the same number whichever way it is rolled. The number two on each face of the die was derived from Albert Einstein's quote "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Even though the dice symbolize perfect order they don't have perfect symmetry. The two dots on the rightmost face of the right cube are not a mirror image of the same in the left cube. This is a tribute to Richard Feynman's statement, "I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about". However hard one may try to remove all uncertainty and induce perfect symmetry perfection is an impossible ideal that eludes humans. The Shaastra website says "the Shaastra logo embodies the essence of what Shaastra strives to achieve - innovation, quality and perfection."

References

  1. ↑ "IIT-M technical fest aspires to new frontiers". The Hindu. 3 January 2014. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  2. ↑ "Stage Set for Bigger, Better Shaastra". The New Indian Express. 3 January 2014. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  3. ↑ "Team Indus to help students aim for moon". The Times of India. 5 September 2013. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  4. ↑ "The best of all IITs converges at Shaastra". The Hindu. 7 January 2014. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  5. ↑ "IIT Student's Copter Limca-bound". The New Indian Express. 9 January 2014. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  6. ↑ "IIT-M technical fest aspires to new frontiers". The New Indian Express. 4 January 2014. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  7. ↑ "IIT-M technical fest aspires to new frontiers". The Hindu. 2 July 2013. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  8. ↑ "At IIT, Junkyard War is an auto building contest". The Hindu. 8 October 2006. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  9. ↑ Srinivasan, Meera (13 October 2005). "A solution to `chucking' problem". The Hindu. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  10. ↑ Srinivasan, Meera (7 October 2005). "Day One sets the pace for mega tech fest". The Hindu. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  11. ↑ "Eco-friendly paper bridge". The Hindu. 26 December 2002. Retrieved 15 October 2013.

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