Samsung India inaugurated the Samsung AR-VR innovation lab at IIT Jodhpur. The Samsung AR-VR innovation lab at IIT Jodhpur will train students on new technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) helping them learn industry-relevant skills and making them job-ready. The courses taught at the lab would be run by Samsung engineers in conjunction with the faculty of IIT Jodhpur, and will be offered to BTech, MTech and PhD students of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. A batch of 30-35 bachelor students would be trained every year, and a part of this lab would be used by research fellows to conduct their experiments.
Intense training
The curriculum at the Samsung AR-VR innovation lab at IIT Jodhpur will include augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality, with special emphasis on touch, haptics, taste, smell, robotic interfaces, tele-presence and brain-machine interfaces. The course will be taught over 14 weeks through classroom lectures, assignments, lab sessions, self-study, and mini projects.
This launch takes the total count of such labs under the Samsung’s corporate social initiative, Samsung Digital Academy, to seven. It has set up six innovation labs in IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Roorkee, and IIT Guwahati, as a part of its Samsung Digital Academy programme. With the first one starting at IIT Delhi in 2017, these labs have trained over 800 IIT students till date.
“The first Samsung innovation lab started in 2017 as a part of our citizenship initiative and since then several students have been up-skilled on new-age technologies such as IoT and pervasive computing. These labs have also been used by students and faculty at the IITs for collaborative research with Samsung engineers,” said Peter Rhee, Corporate Vice President, Samsung India.
Fostering innovation
Samsung Digital Academy aims to “bridge the digital divide and proficiency gaps in the country by skilling students on cutting-edge technology.” The Samsung AR-VR innovation lab was virtually inaugurated by Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, and Dr Mugdha Sinha, Secretary to Government, Art, Literature, Culture and Archaeology, and Director General, Jawahar Kala Kendra, Rajasthan.
“Samsung Digital Academy is a great initiative to bring one of the finest global technology leaders, Samsung and IIT Jodhpur together to form a lab dedicated for technological innovations. Samsung has a strong grip on every technology they use and I am certain that the innovation lab at IIT Jodhpur will enable students to explore various technological territories and come up with endless discoveries,” said Sawhney.
“As AR and VR is finding applications in diverse fields such as education, industrial design, robotics, infrastructure management, and medicine, students of different programmes including those of medical technology can take advantage of this facility,” said Prof. Santanu Chaudhury, Director, IIT Jodhpur.
“Samsung R&D institute in Delhi has been working closely for many years with premier engineering institutions of India to foster collaborations for joint teaching, mentoring, and promoting research on advanced and emerging technologies,” said Deokho Kim, Managing Director, Samsung Research and Development Institute, Delhi.