1. Some Insights on the current situation of COVID-19

Life is the most precious gift. And the most valuable resource is time. Fortunately all of us have both of them right now. We have plenty of time that we can utilize in a productive way to lead our lives into a brighter future.

We live in a society where the safety of every life is of utmost importance to everyone else. Only we happened to realize it recently. It is a kind of positive change that happened because of COVID-19. However the responsibility to keep ourselves safe from the Pandemic lies in our own hands. We can do so by engaging ourselves in some activities which will help us to move towards a sustainable career by staying indoors safely.

The situation has brought many tragedies, but in a way it has also done some good to the nature and also to our lives. Now all we have to do is to stay safe,keep the good changes, come out of this situation clean & Healthy along with our near & dear ones. While we are doing this, it is also a good chance for us to prepare for a better future.

2. Stay Home. Stay Safe. Do not Panic!

By PANIC, we mean the fear of future. What will be the situation after the lockdown? The Corona Virus Pandemic has affected many developed & Developing countries and it has hit them in a really bad way. The countries will take some time to come out of the financial crisis caused by the present situation and the loses incurred by the companies is also huge. All this negativity is going to hit the job market and we might face some difficulties, which might be called by the dreaded name “RECESSION”.

However, my suggestion is , DO NOT PANIC. Be POSITIVE. Every Crisis brings some opportunities too, we only have to identify and grab on time. Especially there is a lot of scope for Embedded Solutions in health industry right now and in coming future.

Students from the upcoming pass out years must be in a blank state of mind, currently, with absolutely no idea about what is going to happen once they are out. It is not my intention to give some future predictions but we would give some suggestions using which, students will have some direction to think in and to seek guidance from someone at least. We have some suggestions for them to cope with this situation.

3. Career Opportunities

• Will the Embedded Industry remain same before and after COVID-19 crisis?
• I am a ECE 2019/2020 graduate? What opportunities can I expect after COVID-19 crisis?
• How to utilize the lockdown period and get ready for the Industry past COVID-19?

These are some questions that must be running in the heads of the Engineering graduates right now.It is Universal Truth that Right Skill and Hard work will never go waste. Even if the world is at a crisis right now, it has to still run.

There will be companies, Industries and jobs. But the numbers might be slightly less compared to the situation before. But they will never be ZERO. This means there will be more competition, which in turn becomes more demand for the right skillset.

Hiring is not going to stop. But hiring will be based on worth of the candidate, because there will be more number of candidates available per position. So your job as a student during this time will be to increase your WORTH.

The COVID-19 situation has actually opened doors to new possibilities in technologies like Artificial intelligence, Block Chain, Embedded Systems etc.

Right now there is huge requirement for Innovative products to deal with this crisis in a better way, in the Health Industry. For example Ventilators, contact less temperature sensors, COVID-19 patient data tracking systems etc.

There is also requirement for time & cost effective solutions in development countries like India. Which brings in greater opportunities for Open Source Technologies. For example, there is a sudden demand for ventilators due to Corona virus disease spread, but there is not enough supply. As a quick solution, Open Source Ventilator development is one of the ongoing projects.

COVID-19 Will Fuel the Next Wave of Innovation

quoted from an article by Mr.Hamza Mudassir

Latest Technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Robots, Drones, Face Recognition, Chatbot and Block Chain are all contributing to the fight against the fast-spreading corona virus.Embedded Systems is an important part of the above all technologies. Let’s see the various solutions which are under development already, as part of the fight against COVID-19 situation to boost our love for Technology.

• Contact less temperature detection:

Take temperature measurements from a safe distance with Fluke infrared thermometer. It is going to be a very basic but mandatory requirement at the entry or exit of many places where people are going to gather.

• Face Recognition:

Face Recognition Technology is being used in surveillance systems that can recognize people, even while they are wearing masks, with a relatively high degree of accuracy. Facial recognition companies are pitching the technology as a sanitary alternative to fingerprint scanners for attendance systems.

• Robots:

Robots can deliver food and medicine to patients. Also can be used for sanitisation of hospitals, offices or malls without human intervention.

• Drones:

Drones are being used for contactless medicine delivery, spraying disinfectants around the country, especially in quarantine zones.

• Chatbots

To provide genuine information from a valid source on which people can rely so that fake news can be avoided.

• Blockchain

Blockchain could offer ways to improve many public health activities associated with preventing and controlling diseases. Blockchain technology has the ability to improve health, access to information, supply chains and many more.

“Glad to say, almost all of these solutions involve Embedded Systems as the main technology.“

During this lockdown period, we are conducting online classes to our students to keep them engaged. Also, since we believe in practical oriented teaching, we have decided to take an initiative to invent cost effective solutions to deal with COVID-19 kind of situations using Embedded Systems with the help of our students.

These will be solutions we are going to develop to get our students to handle social responsibility while practicing social distancing.

Execution Plan:

• Encourage our students to come up with innovative ideas to help fight the COVID-19 crisis and also useful in future.
• Check the feasibility and choose the best ideas to be converted to projects.
• Assign tasks to all interested students, and let them work in their home comfort zone.
• Coordinate meetings and start working on the project.

Benefits to our students:

• Addition of New Skillset and real-time projects to the profiles,will increase opportunities.
• Students get to research and learn about latest technologies like AI, ML, IoT etc.
• Students will learn the real-time applications of latest technologies.
• Goal based / project based learning will lead to real-time knowledge.
• Weightage added to their profiles because of the projects.
• Utilization of valuable time during lockdown period.
• Preference In placements by companies as the projects are going to be related to Health Industry, the domain with maximum opportunities in coming future.
• Boost in Confidence.

How to utilize this time and get ready for the Industry past COVID-19?

We are going to provide some suggestions to students to up-skill themselves and get ready for the upcoming Industry requirements. This is a situation to sharpen the pencils and dive into the technology pool, not just keep worrying about the recession.

Lets start with

• Learn some programming language, preferably C Programming, if you want to make a career in Embedded Systems.
• Practice & Solve at least one programmatic problem daily using websites like hacker ranker or hacker earth etc.
• Learn about open source technologies like Linux Operating System.
• Start understanding and analyzing the open source code available and try to make some contributions.