NITK students secure first place in Bharat AI SoC Student Challenge

Mangaluru: National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK) Surathkal has stated that a team of three 4th-semester BTech students from the department of electronics and communication engineering secured first place in the Bharat AI SoC Student Challenge. The competition was jointly organised by ARM, the Chip to Startup Programme, ministry of electronics & IT, and IIT Delhi.

The students are Shresh Parti, Rushil Jain and Sriprahlad Mukunthan, mentored by Prof Suman David of ECE, NITK. The NITK team won in the category -Touchless HCI for Media Control Using Hand Gestures on NVIDIA Jetson Nano. Their project developed a touchless human-computer interaction system that translates real-time hand gestures into media control commands (such as play/pause and volume adjustment) for VLC Media Player. The solution utilised MediaPipe for hand landmark detection, classified static and dynamic gestures, and mapped them to keyboard shortcuts using Python libraries.

The five-week virtual challenge aimed to enhance industry-relevant skills through project-based learning in artificial intelligence and System-on -Chip technologies. Out of 340 project submissions nationwide, six teams were shortlisted in each category for the final presentation. NITK’s team emerged victorious in their category.

At the award ceremony held on May 14 at ARM Labs, Bengaluru, the students received a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh and certificates. They also had the opportunity to visit ARM’s labs and interact with leading designers. Prof B Ravi, director of NITK Surathkal, congratulated the team on their achievement and commended them for bringing national recognition to the institute.