NRI-led team develops new search engine
By siliconindia staff writer   |   Wednesday, 14 April 2004, 19:30 IST
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LONDON: Ever imagined a search engine somewhat similar to Google to retrieve results based on an image or a sketch? Just draw a picture of a wing nut, and the engine will search a database and retrieve all the images matching your drawing. Sounds unreal? Sounds unreal but Purdue University researchers led by an Indian American Professor Karthik Ramani, 1985 product of Indian Institute of Technologies-Madras, are soon going to amaze you with this kind of search engine that will turn your imagination into a reality. Researchers at Purdue University Research and Education for Information Systems in Engineering (PRECISE) have created the world's first 3D Computer-Aided Design Part Search Engine for use in Product Lifecycle Applications. This will enable people to search huge industry databases by sketching a part from memory, penciling in modifications to an existing part or selecting a part that has a similar shape. "It's like a special kind of Google that lets you search for parts based on their three-dimensional shapes," says Karthik Ramani, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the PRECISE.

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