The innovative vehicle designed by students of VSS University of Technology, Burla, for use during natural disaster. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, Jan. 29: A team of 25 undergraduate students from different engineering departments of the Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, have come together to design an all-terrain vehicle.

The vehicle is believed to come handy for disaster mitigation teams during natural calamities and has been designed to sustain extreme off road conditions such as uneven terrains, ascent and descent of high inclinations, traversing muddy and swampy regions that offer extremely loose ground with minimum traction and stability.

Excited with what they have come up with, the students are all set to participate in the BAJA SAEIndia — an annual competition for all-terrain vehicle designs.

The team titled Team VEERss worked for around a year to come up with the vehicle.

“We divided ourselves into different sub-groups based on component specialisation and expertise,” said captain of the team Swayam Shree.

Technical head Sahil Sankalp said: “Team VEERss is the only one from the state and among three others from the country to qualify for BAJA SAE Washington, USA.”

“We aim to win the BAJA SAEIndia competition. As this would help us develop sound relations with companies from the automobile industry and to obtain sponsors for other revolutionary and promising projects that the team has been working on,” said Deepika, a student.

The team also aims to take part in international version of BAJA SAE for broadening their scope and compete with more experienced teams.

“Although we are technically self-sustaining, our team lacks adequate funding every year that makes it difficult to develop prototypes for new technologies,” she said.

The students said that they did not have access to any scientific and technical journals that keeps them aware of recent developments in the field of automotive systems.

As of now, the students rely on the university workshop for their projects. But the teams appeared quite hopeful.

“We look forward to perform even better in the coming years,” said Preetam Bag, another student adding that they would apply for patents for their innovations.