Empowering young engineers with tools for innovation

At a time when young Indian engineers are vying for opportunities in MNCs and in the process contributing to the organisations in developed countries, LabVIEW, a graphical programming software, is providing a group of students from RV College of Engineering an opportunity to come up with innovations that work on specific problems within the Indian context.

Imagine the convenience of running the Reva car on either electricity or petrol. This is exactly what the students in collaboration with Bosch and National Instruments have come up with.

The hybrid car was facilitated by LabVIEW. 

“LabVIEW is a tool to solve problems. India is a country with unique problems and to address them we need Indian engineers to come up with innovations specific to the problems,” said Jayaram Pillai, managing director for India, Russia and Arabia, National Instruments, at the launch of LabVIEW 2010.

“The problems of our country have to be solved by us, the minds in the United States cannot,” he said.

“I have been using the software from the time I got out of college and even today I use it at work,” said Arun Kumar, technical leader at Schneider Electric, about using LabVIEW.

Pillai said that the challenge was to improve the quality of tools involved so that the many engineers that pass out of college every year can make some innovative contributions. Students should concentrate more on core engineering, he said.

“Most engineering students are sure to work for a MNC where there is stagnation. However, this attitude is seeing a change,” Pillai said.

National Instruments, a company which equips engineers with better tools that improves efficiency of products, works with about 400 colleges throughout India.

It also works with small and medium enterprises giving them access to advanced technologies at lower investments.
Other initiatives include Planet Nurturing Innovation, an initiative designed to empower engineers and students in developing countries to achieve economic prosperity and sustainable development through access to technology and education.