BY: Y.Bala Murali krishna

Panaji, Nov 2 (UNI) An integrated radar system that could be used for any application including defence, weather and airport.

A nanotechnology based sensor that is tunable for detecting any frequency.

Autonomous remote controlled submersible vessels that could go to any depth and nuclear powered vessels for diving deep into the oceans and devices that could drill the ocean bead beyond 6 km.

These are some of the future high-tech gadgets that could be designed and developed through ''integrated holistic systems approach'', the systems engineers and scientists are now thinking of attempting.

The possibilities of realising them using totally indigenous technology are being debated by top scientists and engineers gathered here at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in connection with the on-going 3-day 30th National Systems Conference with the theme of ''Systems for Marine Exploration'' that began today.

More than 50 experts from different premier scientific nstitutions such as Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Trivandrum, National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad, National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research, Vasco-da-Gama besides NIO, Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL), Hyderabad and National Institute of Ocean Technology, Tamilnadu and various IIT's are participating in the conference.

Addressing the inaugural session, Dr.P.S.Goel, top scientist and secretary of the newly constituted Union Ministry of Earth Sciences, said many integrated complicated systems with indigenous technology could be designed through what he termed as ''holistic thinking process'' that could save precious foreign exchange by replacing imported technologies and devices.

He announced full support of the ministry to any organisation or a consortium which is trying to design such devices through an integrated approach.

He regretted that India had been importing many devices including medical, nanotechnology, biotechnology and marine technology instruments besides basic sensors for want of encouragement to indigenous efforts.

''If we have the holistic lateral thinking process, we can develop systems that could predict atmospheric disturbances and phenomenon including cyclones which are related to solar flares and cosmic rays,'' Dr.Goel told the scientists.

One integrated radar, if developed, could replace a myriad of radars now being used for weather monitoring, navy, airforce and airports as the ''concept of radars is the same but processing of data differs.

It may cost us Rs.100 crores for developing such a multi-user radar in five years but it is required through lateral thinking and multi-disciplinary approach to systems, he observed.

Our sea-based oil platforms work at 50 metres depth and we have to develop capabilities for going further deeper by designing appropriate systems.

In this connection, Dr.Goel, former secretary, department of ocean development, said scientists had achieved recently some success in testing a remotely operated submersible vessel at a depth of 500 metres, avoiding possible damage to the instruments due to salinity.

But we require such vessels with nuclear power source that drill the ocean bed beyond 150 KM as against 6 KM available now for undertaking marine research to unearth the secrets of the ocean vis-a-vis the earth.

Indian scientists, he said, did little in development of marine expedition which mostly depended on available instrumentation and integrated thinking.

We need scuba diving equipment and submersible vessels that could go beyond 2 km depth with reliability for promoting further research on oceans besides extending GPS applications using acoustic frequencies with modulation techniques, he added.

He recalled how India made a world record by developing a satellite within two years immediately after the 1999 Kargil war with one metre resolution to help Jawans detect movement of intruders across the icy borders.

This was achieved with a holistic systems approach from the satellite we had with 6 metre resolution.

President of the Systems Society of India and director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre,Trivandrum Dr.B.N.Suresh called for carrying forward the concept of holistic systems approach in science and life for arriving at solutions in different fields.

In this connection, he mentioned the ''fuzzy logical eye'' of a simple fly that could see with its 4000 lenses in its eye. This could find many applications if studied with the systems approach, he added.

Dr.Ashok Mishra, director, IIT-Mumbai, Dr.K.K. Agarwal, vice chancellor of Guru Govind Singh University and and Dr.B.Bhattracharya of IIT-Kanpur were later presented with gold medals for their distinguished achievement in promoting scientific systems in various sectors.

The discussions ranged from guidance algorithm for lunar soft landing missions to estimation of minimal model for blood glucose insulin interaction.

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