Engineering Innovation in India
1. IIT-M researchers develop VR tool to quantify surgeons’ laparoscopic skills
Researchers at IIT Madras developed a tool to objectively measure how well surgeons performed laparoscopic, or keyhole, procedures — a breakthrough that could standardise how surgical skills are taught and tested. Laparoscopic surgery, commonly used for gallbladder removals and bariatric weight-loss operations, presents unique challenges. Surgeons operate through tiny incisions using long instruments, watching their movements on a monitor. This limits tactile feedback, complicates depth perception, and inverts hand movements due to the fulcrum effect — tiny cut in the skin acts like a seesaw pivot. Traditional training programmes relied on subjective evaluation tools to help surgeons overcome these hurdles. Though structured, these methods depend heavily on an instructor’s judgement, leading to variability in scoring precision, efficiency, tissue handling, and overall competence. The IIT team took another approach, drawing on computer science principles. They applied Fitts’ Law — a concept from human-computer interaction that predicts movement time based on a target’s distance and size — to design a custom VR haptic (touch) simulator. This system replicates laparoscopic conditions, including inverted visuals, and quantifies performance metrics such as movement time and throughput during standardised tapping tasks. Scientists tested the model on 24 young surgeons and found that inverted tool visuals increased movement time by average of 11.86% compared to non-inverted movement. The VR method addresses training hurdles — the fulcrum effect, reduced touch feedback, and mirror (reversed) movements — outperforming subjective systems by providing consistent, data-driven scores. The research bridges computer science, engineering and neurosurgery, setting the stage for global adoption of standardised VR assessments that could revolutionise minimally invasive training worldwide. With surgeon shortages and rising demand for minimally invasive procedures, this innovation could accelerate skill development, reduce training costs, and improve patient safety, said researchers.
2. Researchers at IIT Kanpur map the magnetic field inside the Sun
Researchers at IIT Kanpur map the magnetic field inside the Sun for the first time by combining 30 years of surface observational data from space satellites into a 3D computational model. This study provides an unparalleled estimate of the magnitude, structure, and evolution of magnetic fields inside the Sun over three decades, which is tremendously important for understanding how our Sun drives space weather that disrupts satellites, radio communication, navigation, and technological assets. Understanding solar magnetic activity is essential for explaining and predicting space-weather events that can disrupt satellites, power grids, navigation, and communication systems on Earth. This activity does not remain constant: it rises and falls roughly every 11 years, following a regular magnetic cycle that governs the appearance of sunspots and solar eruptions.
The physical mechanism behind this cyclic behaviour is the solar dynamo – a process through which the Sun generates its magnetic field deep within its interior. Since this region lies hidden beneath the solar surface, scientists cannot observe it directly. Although modern instruments can measure the solar surface magnetic field in unprecedented detail, the inaccessibility to probe the solar interior has long limited efforts to estimate the magnitude and behaviours of the magnetic field inside the Sun. The unavailability of a proper estimate of the solar magnetic field inside the Sun is one of the major bottlenecks to testing and refining theories of how the solar dynamo operates.
A recent study led by Soumyadeep Chatterjee, a PhD student, together with his supervisor Prof. Gopal Hazra from the Department of Physics, IIT Kanpur, takes a step towards addressing this challenge. The researchers developed a three-dimensional dynamo model that assimilates a huge amount of long-term observational data of the solar surface magnetic field for three decades. Combining all 30 years of surface magnetic field data into a 3D computational model, the study examines how large-scale, average magnetic patterns evolve over time and map the entire three-dimensional magnetic field inside the Sun. The idea is that if magnetic fields deep inside the Sun play a dominant role in shaping surface magnetism, then traces of these internal fields should persist in surface observations collected over long periods.
One of the key strengths of this approach is its strong reliance on observations rather than purely theoretical simulations. By anchoring their model to real data, the researchers are able to place meaningful constraints on the magnitude, structure, and evolution of magnetic fields beneath the solar surface. The model is validated using observations of the solar polar magnetic field – a widespread field near the poles that is known to provide an important indication of the strength of the next solar cycle.
The researchers further suggest that their approach is very robust for predicting the peak of the next solar cycle and much more realistic than any other predictive models of the solar cycle. This study also shows that the computational model combined with big observational data is the future of the field, and it is extremely important to improve long-term planning to protect space missions and technologies against solar activity.
Source : https://www.iitk.ac.in/reveal-sun-mysterious-magnetic-interior
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