BTech in Robotics & Cyber-Physical Systems

This course is the introductory course on computational thinking. The course aims to introduce the elements of programming and the paradigms starting from the most basic to the more advanced like divide and conquer and how these elements and paradigms can be used to build programs for problem solving. The course introduces these concepts through problems in computation that bring out the relevance and the significance of programming. Aside, the course aims to introduce students to important mathematical problems through the lens of computation and thereby inculcate a computational lens for problem solving. Given the proliferation of computation and the continued growth and relevance of computing systems, the course will therefore provide a very critical foundation: the means to “computational thinking”. The course simultaneously teaches ``how to apply the concepts and synthesize programs” using major programming languages such as C.

This course will cover fundamental aspects of linear algebra and ordinary differential equations from the stand point of basic theoretical knowledge and practical applications. Students will acquire training in foundational concepts. Additionally, they will learn how to use a computer to solve mathematical problems relevant to a broad engineering curriculum. The course is divided into four modules each spanning about four weeks. Each module comprises a conceptual core which is split across four sub-modules called tiers. Each tier will cover several related topics that will be discussed over weekly lectures and laboratory classes. There will be two lectures of forty five minutes each and one laboratory class of one hour and thirty minutes every week. The course will require completion of four topical mini-projects spread across the semester.

This course will cover fundamentals of a development environment to develop programs, testing, debugging, and trouble shooting. Since all programs run in a systems environment, the course will help to understand the behavior of the programs better and become more proficient in coding. It will also introduce students to vi editor, git, github, etc. Scripting languages primarily Bash, and Basic Python will be used to develop code. These scripting languages will enable you to write custom scripts to suit your needs, and also in various assignments to do automation of repetitive tasks and speed up by hundred times or more.

The course is designed to answer the big question: Facing the Grand Challenges today, what solutions do we need to apply to create a positive future? Or, in the words of Buckminster Fuller: “To make the world work for a hundred per cent of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone.” This course explores the rich source of ideas from a 3.8-billion-year research and development period. That source is the vast array of species of biological organisms that can be seen as embodying technologies equivalent to those invented by us. Humans have achieved remarkable things, but seeing some of the extraordinary adaptations that have evolved in natural organisms gives us a sense of humility about how much we must learn. Our fascination with nature goes way back to our existence. The great asset that nature offers is eons of evolutionary refinement. Nature has a way of using simple rules to create elegant solutions. And the recent advances in biology combined with the massive advantages of expanding scientific knowledge increase the human potential for innovation. The success of this course will lie in motivating the student in their endeavor to proceed further in the fascinating field of biological systems engineering.

What are the assumptions and beliefs that we have not examined in the modern age? How do we become aware of our implicit beliefs? What possibilities open up if we investigate and examine our presuppositions? How can we respond to the Grand Challenges of our time, if we don’t know how to think and reason critically? Most of us go through life believing that what we have been told by some figure of authority or what we have read in a book or heard on TV or the radio is true. Our educational systems do not teach us to rigorously question and enquire into forms of knowledge that are presented to us. And, thus, we go through our education and later on in our careers believing in a set of assumptions that shape our possibilities. These assumptions limit the horizons of our thinking, perceiving, and acting. In this course, you will learn to meticulously develop the skill of thinking, reflecting, and enquiring critically and being able to reason in a scientific, evidence-based manner. The course will focus on sharpening your intellectual abilities so that thinking critically and scientifically becomes a natural way of approaching the world. 

The broad goal of The Innovation Lab and Grand Challenges (ILGC) is to get students to experience the societal challenges that eventually link to global sustainable development goals. The semester one course allows students to experience life by exposing them to surrounding communities. Hence, they empathize with communities and their daily challenges in living conditions. Working collaboratively in teams, they understand the diversity and complexity of such challenges. This semester has a series of comprehensive tutorials to explain the concepts of sustainability, sustainable development goals and the connections between an individual, their community and the country/region they live in. Through field visits, the students learn to make non-participatory observations that are then discussed and presented. The community experience in this course in its first semester equips the students to delve deeper into the challenges in the following semester. 

Design and Innovation is about creating the future - that which does not exist today. Navigating the unknown requires a different set of skills from analytical problem-solving, and involves building empathy with the user. The design thinking process, a non-linear, iterative process; is a solution-based approach to solving problems. Students learn about empathy and the need for a human-centric approach in our thinking to better tackle ill-defined or even wicked problems. During the course, the students learn to reframe the problem in human-centric ways, create numerous concepts, work collaboratively, and adopt a hands-on approach to prototyping and rapid testing. Students are also taught the basics of engineering drawing, essential materials and processes and prototype making via the maker space. Having undergone this course the students will be empowered to apply the methodology to solve complex problems that occur in industry, our society, and across the world irrespective of their occupation or field of work and be able to make tangible prototypes.

This is an introductory course to Object-Oriented Programming and Data structures. These two topics play an important role in any programming task that the student will take up later in his/her career. These topics are also very basic and essential for all the four streams at Plaksha. 

Building on the Computational Thinking course taught in the first semester, students will be introduced to a deeper examination of the Object Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigm, its differences with other programming paradigms and the trade-offs. The OOP paradigm will be demonstrated through problem solving examples using commonly used data structures. Broadly, the following topics in the course will be emphasized: • Principles of OOP • Classes, objects, methods, and inheritance • Program structure, templates, and exception handling • Stacks, Queues and Lists • Trees, basics of Searching and Sorting • Graphs and applications

The course is designed to provide a broad foundation of concepts in basic and applied physics. The objective it to expose the students to core fields like classical mechanics, modern physics, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics while presenting the unified themes in a way that the students understand the concepts and can apply them in solving real life challenges. The course would be delivered while relying heavily on demonstrations, laboratory experiments and projects with the vision of project based experiential learning aligned towards generating theoretical as well as experimental skills.

This course will cover fundamental aspects of probability and statistics from the standpoint of basic theoretical knowledge and practical applications. Students will acquire training in foundational concepts. Additionally, they will learn how to use a computer to solve diverse engineering problems by building and analyzing suitable mathematical models. The course is divided into five modules. Each module comprises a conceptual core which is split across multiple sub-modules (tiers). Each tier will cover several related topics that will be discussed over weekly lectures and laboratory classes.  

This course offers an exploration of the remarkable machinery shaped by nature, spanning from human organ systems down to the intricate world of cells and genetic material. The course consists of four modules: Human Physiology, Fundamental Biology, Immunology, and The Science and Art of Biomimicry. In the Human Physiology module, learners will gain insight into the functionality of different organ systems and their regulation, essential for maintaining optimal bodily function. Moving on to the Fundamental Biology module, we take a deep dive into the mesmerizing micro and nanomachinery present within cells and biomolecules. In the module on Immunology, we explore the intricate defense mechanisms that safeguard the human body. Finally, in the module on Biomimicry, we engage in captivating discussions about real-world design and engineering solutions, all inspired by natural designs. By the end of the course, the students will have a comprehensive understanding of the different mechanisms by which natural systems operate and will be able to connect these concepts and relate them to real-world applications.

The aim of this course is to learn how to think like an economist. It will offer a lens on how individuals and firms take decisions to maximize their utility and profits. It will develop the tools of modern microeconomic theory and discuss their applications. Topics include consumer theory, firms and costs, government policies, efficiency, perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly, externalities, and frontiers of microeconomics. We develop models of how households make consumption decisions and then aggregate those results to the market level. We then turn to the supply side of markets, engaging in a detailed investigation of how firms make production decisions. Next, we combine demand and supply to understand how prices of goods are determined in perfectly and imperfectly competitive markets. The course will give you a closer look at economic notions of efficiency and well-being, and the ever-present trade-off between efficiency and equity. We will also take time to consider uncertainty and risk, game theory, and market failures. In the final part of the course, we turn our attention to macroeconomics, which involves the study of the economy, especially issues related to output, unemployment, productivity, and inflation.

What is the relationship between Technology and Society? Does technology influence society? Or does society influence technology? Or is there some other way – beyond the ideas of ‘influence’ and ‘cause and effect’ - to think about technology and society? But before we can get to a place to think about a different way of imagining the relationship between technology and society we must first ask ourselves the question: What is technology? By technology, do we simply mean an instrument like a cell phone, rocket ship, or electric car? Or is something more involved? Is technology perhaps first and foremost an ‘idea’? Or is technology a particular way of knowing the world around us? In this course, we will rigorously enquire into the different meanings of the idea of technology and its relationship to society from the perspectives of philosophy, history, social anthropology, human evolution and civilizational studies. We will look at examples from the past and present, but more importantly, also start imagining what the relationship between technology and society could be in the future. Above all, we will begin to understand technology from the standpoint of the threefold matrix of thinking, knowing and making.

The objective of the course is to train the students in the field of basic and applied electronics, which forms the backbone of the modern semiconductor and telecommunication industry. The course covers the fundamental and applied aspects of the subject aligned towards the design and development of novel electronic devices and systems. The course starts with an introduction to the broader field of electronics engineering and its relevance for other industry verticals against the framework of significant inventions and innovations. It will cover the essential aspects of circuit theory and evolves towards encompassing the operation of semiconductor devices which form the backbone of computational and communication systems. A special focus of the course is on how simple devices and circuits get interconnected to form complex units which play a defining role in the operation of sophisticated gadgets. Towards the completion of the course, the students would be able to conceive and prototype new artifacts, systems, and gadgets, while using the foundation of analog and digital electronics.

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to robotics and cyber-physical systems. Students will engage in hands-on lab activities, assignments, projects, and guest lectures covering both research and practical applications. Key topics include sensors and actuators, system modeling, kinematics, dynamics and controls, perception, planning and navigation, IoT systems, communication, and hardware. These components are essential for designing intelligent machines. By the end of the course, students will have gained the skills to design, build, and evaluate simple robotic and IoT systems, preparing them for more complex projects in their future endeavors.

This is a broad course which will introduce students to various topics in Applied Mathematics including (but not limited to): ordinary differential equations, numerical integration, partial differential equations, calculus of variations for finding optimal solutions, and derivation of numerical methods for finding optimal solutions. This course starts with an overview of single variable calculus. It then discusses Taylor series expansion, linear approximations, and how to numerically differentiate a function. The course then touches upon first and second order numerical optimization methods. Post that, it discusses ordinary differential equations covering aspects of their analytical and numerical solutions. The course then discusses multi-variable calculus and linear constraint optimization. Finally, the course will introduce partial differential equations and calculus of variations.

What do we mean when we say Entangled Worlds? Entanglement as such implies a state of intertwining, interpenetration, deep connectivity, interlocking and irreducible, fundamental interdependency and interrelationship. Although it would seem obvious that we live in a profoundly interconnected world in which both processes initiated by humans and non-human biological and non-biological entities continuously impact one another, our actions as organic, conscious and sentient beings do not reflect the obvious fact of interconnectedness. Human beings by and large continue to operate as though their actions are isolated events that do not impact the rest of the world including other human beings, plant and animal species. We could claim that the way we think and act is no longer commensurate with the kinds of immense global challenges we are facing. In this course, we will explore and reflect on the question of entanglements from a variety of transdisciplinary perspectives including those of art, music, imagination, biological systems, quantum mechanics, language, mathematics, design, thought, time, space, history, philosophy and technology. 

This course offers an introduction to the area of Data Science, combining scientific methods, visualization, statistics, and computing to extract meaningful insights from data. The course will introduce the students to data in various forms, the strategies used for collecting data, and techniques to visualize the data for exploratory analysis. The students will get hands-on practice to develop intuition for forming hypotheses and testing them using the available data or designing strategies for collecting appropriate data. They will also learn techniques for fitting data for extracting more complex relations between data attributes.

This course explores philosophical and foundational issues concerning computers, computing, and artificial intelligence. It addresses a range of fundamental questions, including: What is a computer? Could a computer be conscious? How could you test whether a computer is thinking? Are thinking and consciousness the same or different? Is the human brain a computer? Are there limits to what is computable? The course also describes the work of Alan Turing, and his revolutionary ideas and legacy. While a graduate student, Turing invented the fundamental logical principles of the modern computer. He is responsible for the model of computability that underlies modern computer science—the universal Turing machine. The course investigates this important model and the scope and limits of the universal machine. It also includes an introduction to the early years of the computer revolution, covering the secret origins of electronic computers during World War II and the earliest work on artificial intelligence.

The course will introduce fundamental aspects of complex analysis, fourier series and vector calculus, with applications to science and engineering.  

We live in a time of tremendous technological progress. Simultaneously we also live in a time of unprecedented uncertainty. The advent of technology since the turn of the century has led to many advancements in the way that humans live and operate. Each new technological advancement seems to bring with it unforeseen consequences. Although it would seem obvious that we live in a profoundly interconnected world in which both processes initiated by humans and non-human biological and non-biological entities continuously impact one another, our actions as organic, conscious and sentient beings do not reflect the obvious fact of interconnectedness. Human beings by and large continue to operate as though their thoughts and actions are isolated events that do not impact the rest of the world including other human beings, plant and animal species. Environmental degradation, climate change, species extinction, economic inequality, various forms of injustice, war and so on seem to point toward a fundamental flaw in the way we think and act. In fact, the way we think and act is no longer commensurate with the kinds of immense global challenges we are facing in the so-called ‘Anthropocene’.