Nasscom hints Opportunties are Plenty for Department of Electronics..

The growth rates in the domestic market would start improving. Consequently, the revenues accrued by the IT companies from the domestic business vis-a-vis exports might go up in the next five years.

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) expects a plethora of opportunities from the initiatives of the Narendra Modi government, which, in business terms, can run into ‘several hundred thousand crore’.

A very large number of opportunities are expected from the initiatives such as Make in India, Digital India and Smart Cities. “I can’t put a number to this. It could be several hundred thousand crore (business). This is what the people are talking about for the IT sector,” Nasscom Chairman, BVR Mohan Reddy, told The Hindu.

For example, he said, various aspects of the proposed Smart Cities would have IT component. These cities had to be digitised in terms of land information, which was an IT-enabled service, he added. “Similarly, every asset in these cities, whether it is water, sewer, cable, telephone or power, will be monitored through information communication technology. This again leads to other applications such as smart grid and smart metering, which all have components of IT,” he said.

However, Mr. Reddy said that ‘Ache Din’ had not yet come to the IT industry. “Ache din to nahi aaye. Aane wala hai. The hope is there,” he said adding that the government, at this point of time, was trying to articulate its vision.

Stating that he was pleased with the framework of Smart Cities announced by the government last month, the Nasscom Chairman expressed the hope that the growth rates in the domestic market would start improving. Consequently, the revenues accrued by the IT companies from the domestic business vis-a-vis exports might go up in the next five years, he added.

“Today our (revenue) distribution between exports and domestic is 70:30 on a $148 billion base. The 30 (percentage of revenues from the domestic market) will probably become 40 and the 70 (per cent from exports) may become 60 by 2020 when the total revenues of the IT sector was targeted to be $300 billion,” he said.

Mr. Reddy said that the improvement in the domestic market was a healthy sign for any industry in the world. “The domestic market should be stronger than the global markets because it will provide you an opportunity to validate your thoughts and systems before you go abroad and try to sell them,” he pointed out.

But does this mean better profit margin for the Indian IT industry? Mr. Reddy has his own doubts. “I don't know because still there is lot of uncertainty with the domestic business. Government continues to be a very difficult (customer) to manage in terms of procurement,” he said.

The Chairman of Nasscom said that the government continued to have a methodology called “T1 and L1, which means technically you should be the best and pricing-wise you should be the lowest. Both (together) can’t happen because if you want to have technically best guys, you need to pay them the best (price). If you bid low, obviously you are employing monkeys and the result what you are going to get is anarchy.”

Therefore, he said, Nasscom was working for a change in the procurement processes, especially with the Department of Electronics.

Robot controlled by thoughts and brain signals developed

A robot that can be controlled with your thoughts and brain signals has been developed, says new research. The robot is developed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Switzerland.

The robot can be controlled remotely through brain signals and can perform various tasks. The team of researchers, headed by Professor Jose del R. Millain, particularly had disabled people in mind while working on the concept to restore a sense of independence to the disabled.

Nine disabled people and 10 healthy people in Italy, Germany and Switzerland took part in the task of piloting a robot with their thoughts. For several weeks, each of the subjects put on an electrode-studded hat capable of analysing their brain signals. They then instructed the robot to move, transmitting their instructions in real time via internet from their home country. By virtue of its video camera, screen and wheels, the robot, located in an EPFL laboratory in Switzerland, was able to film as it moved while displaying the face of the remote pilot via Skype.

The person at the controls, as if moving in place of the robot, was able to interact with whoever the robot crossed paths with. “Each of the nine subjects with disabilities managed to remotely control the robot with ease after less than 10 days of training,” said Millain. The brain-machine interface developed by the researchers goes even further. The robot is able to avoid obstacles by itself, even when it is not told to. To avoid getting overly tired, the pilot can also take a break from giving indications. If it doesn’t receive more indications, the robot will continue on the indicated path until it receives the order to stop. The tests revealed no difference in piloting ability between healthy and disabled subjects.

In the second part of the tests, the disabled people with residual mobility were asked to pilot the robot with the movements they were still capable of doing, for example by simply pressing the side of their head on buttons placed nearby. They piloted the robot just as if they were uniquely using their thoughts. “Will robots soon become a fact of daily life for people suffering from a disability? Too soon to say,” Milan said. “For this to happen, insurance companies will have to help finance these technologies,” he added. The findings were published in a special edition of Proceedings of the IEEE.

Link: http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/robot-controlled-by-thoughts-and-brain-signals-developed/article7350605.ece

Convener -National Conference on Emerging Engineering Trends-2012