IT major Wipro & IISc (Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru) are jointly working on “Driverless Car Project” & building the country’s first indigenous “Metal 3-D Printing Machine”, said Azim Premji, the founder-chairman of Wipro.
Wipro and IISc have signed up an MOU that promotes collaborative research in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and human-machine interaction, related to autonomous systems and robotics. As a part of this initiative, Wipro will be funding Rs. 9.6 Crores over an initial period of three years (Rs. 3.2 Crores per year).
Last month, both the organizations set up the Wipro-IISc Research and Innovation Network, a hybrid industry-academia collaboration unit, which will initiate the discovery of ideas, research and origination in technology and product design. The network includes the projects to carry out like advanced applied research in autonomous systems, robotics, and 5G telecom.
Premji said “We have continued to recruit from your institution and do collaborative projects at the cutting edge of technology; for example, we are together doing a project on driverless cars and building India’s first indigenous metal 3D printing (additive manufacturing) machine,” at the IISc Convocation 2019. He also praised the IISc for its role in the company’s diversification into the IT business back in 1979.
Premji also said “The institute constituted a committee to advise us on what computer we should make. This consulting project involved surveying the literature on computers being made all over the world. And, it was also a platform for technical discussions, conceptualization and design review between Wipro’s R&D team and IISc. It was here that we began to think about what chips, bus, and microprocessor should be used in the first Wipro computer.”
