The fourth edition of the conference on Automotive R&D Trends 2015 with the theme, Automotive Technology - Mobility as a system was held at Hilton Hotel in Chennai today.
Dr V Sumantran, Conference Chairman and Executive Vice Chairman of Hinduja Automotive Limited welcomed the informed gathering and delivered his theme address. Alejandro Vera Casso, Advisor - Investment & technology Promotion for Asia Paciic, UNIDO gave the special address. Also Michael Carter, Consul - Commercial and Trade Commissioner for Australia to South India and John Harry Conomos, Australian Automotive Industry Envoy delivered the special address.
Dr R Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India made the inaugural address and Dr Sumantran later proposed the vote of thanks. Four plenary sessions were held. In the first plenary session, titled 'Efficient Components and Systems for Automotives' was lively, with Aman Choudhari, Joint Managing Director of Surin Automotive Private Limited and session chairman making the opening remarks. The session was replete with addresses of emminent personalities such as Prof Peter Hodgson, Director of the Institute of Frontier Materials, Deaking University of Australia; Dr PA Lakshmi Narayanan, CTO of Simpson & Co Limited, Prof Ajay Kapoor, Associate Dean - Research, Swinburne University; Sunil Kaul, MD of Behr India Limited and Mark Trigg, Manager - Major Projects Development, The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia giving their insights into the subject.
John Harry Conomos, Dr V Sumantran, Dr R Chidambaram, Michael Carter and Alejandro Vera Casso at the 4th Edition Conference on Automotive R&D Trends 2015 held in Chennai. Photo: M Sathyan.
The second plenary session, 'Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) was pretty much informative. Ravi Pandit, who made the opening remarks. Pandit, Chairman and Group CEO, KPIT Cummins Info Systems moderated the session as the chairman. Dr Purnendu Sinha, Lab Group Manager of Electrical and Software Architecture Group, General Motors Global R&D and Sirish Batchu, Head of Engineering, Bosch Car Multimedia, India operations spoke.
The theme o fthe third plenary session was 'Modern Vehicle Controls - semi and full Autonomous vehcile control', in which Dr Aravind S Bharadwaj, CEO of Automotive Infotronics and session Chairman made the opening remarks. Badrinath Setlur, Global Subject Matter Expert, IBM Global Business Services and JC Sekar, Global Director of Market Access Knowledge Services, Underwriters Laboratories, Singapore shared their experiences.
The last plenary session of the day was on 'Intelligent Vehicle and Road Systems, Transportation Management and Road and Traffic Safety Techonologies'. Like other sessions, the session Chairman, Jayendra Parikh, Executive Director - Advanced Engineering and Mission Summit, Ashok Leyland made the opening remarks, followed by the addresses of Ram Kidambi, Principal of AT Kearney Limited; Kumar Mallampalli, Vice President of Defence Technologies and Srinath K Narayan, Director of Siemens Industry Software (India) private Limited and Dr Sumantran wrapping up the conference. For more on automotive industry, visit Automotive Horizon homepage.
