BANGALORE, INDIA: Students of RV College of Engineering, Bangalore recently unveiled the prototype of India's first plug-in hybrid car for city roads.

This is a unique collaborative effort between University and Industry to facilitate experiential education leading to innovation. The project was undertaken by 11 engineering students, supported by companies such as REVA, National Instruments and Robert Bosch.

The project code named 'Chimera' involved the development of an energy efficient Hybrid Electric Vehicle based on the REVA electric vehicle platform. It is among very few prototypes that uses both electric energy and bio-diesel, thereby maintaining an eco-friendly tag. It has the feature of on-board charging, is fitted with a 440cc diesel engine sourced from Lombardini India and houses a hybrid controller.

National Instruments (NI) supported the students with virtual instrumentation software, hardware and technical training for design and testing of the project. Using NI LabVIEW-a graphical programming environment and NI CompactDAQ-a USB data acquisition system, the team automated the system completely. NI LabVIEW acts as the brain of the car. It was used to create the user interface on which the driver can monitor conditions of the car such as temperature, battery voltage, rpm, etc, thus acting like an in-vehicle data acquisition system.

NI LabVIEW was also used to program the hardware, NI CompactDAQ, to charge the batteries and provide automatic engine switching functionality. The students plan to make the above automated system a standalone one by moving it onto NI CompactRIO which is an intelligent embedded data acquisition and control system.

Robert Bosch also provided both technical and monetary aid for the project. Chetan Maini, Deputy Chairman & CTO, REVA said that the hybrid electric vehicle is yet to be refined and further developed before commercialization.

Mohandas Pai, Member of the Board and Director-Human Resources, and Chief Guest at the ceremony, said such student-industry collaboration leads to innovation by encouraging a problem-solving mindset among students. He urged that students go beyond their syllabus requirements and ideate for the open, competitive market that is today.

Jayaram Pillai, Managing Director for India, Russia & Arabia, National Instruments said: "It is these kinds of university-industry projects that facilitate Experiential Learning, i.e. learning by doing, among today's engineering students. This is a concept that is pioneered by National Instruments and is proven to be the best approach to provide quality education. It helps bridge the gap between industry requirements and university learning, thereby taking the country on the path to a bright future."