Lords of the labs

Srinivasan Ramani is part of a cutting-edge revolution that very few people would have dared to imagine a decade ago -- the transformation of India into a world research centre. Ramani heads HP Research Labs in Bangalore, where he is spearheading a clutch of projects on low-cost Internet and computing access.

Ramani is part of a process that has been taking place for several years. But it was only in 2003 that it gained pace and the world began to wake up to how much research was being transferred to India.

Ramani's work includes developing new models for human interaction with software that are easy to use, even by someone who is semi-literate.

He is not alone in working on sophisticated projects. Others, like 37-year-old Yalla Veera Prakash of Honeywell Technology Solutions Lab, also play key roles in innovation processes critical to their companies' success.

Similarly, Rajendra Singh Sisodia of the Philips Innovation Campus in Bangalore is a vital part of the Dutch company's attempts to automate software testing.

The trio symbolises a revolution in which India is emerging as a low-cost, high-productivity laboratory to the world.

What type of research and development work do companies transfer to India? The fact is that all types of work -- in increasingly core areas -- are being shifted here.

Says Philips India Research head Pradeep Desai: "Given India's software strength, Philips thought it would be appropriate to open a research lab focusing on software engineering skills. This eventually led to software testing and performance analysis."

One common theme is automation. Earlier, software engineers had to write millions of lines of software, and software testing was a long, arduous process.

But now things have changed. Prakash and his team, for instance, are developing operating systems and tools to quickly test the Honeywell equipment going into a Boeing airplane.

Sisodia and his colleagues are trying to automate the testing of software being developed by Philips. Ramani, a PhD in electrical engineering specialising in computer science, and his team are currently focusing on areas like speech communication with computers, human machine interfaces and handling of local language in various forms.

One key innovation of HP Labs in India is Script Mail, which people can use to write, draw and communicate in their own languages. The tool is ideal for Indian languages, which are phonetic and not spelling oriented.

With this easy-to-operate small device, the user composes handwritten mail, uploads outgoing mail and downloads unread mail from the server.

Interestingly, the labs are involved in both fundamental and applied research. On the fundamental side, Sisodia's work at Philips involves bridging the divide between analog and digital technology.

Philips is a leader in analog technology. On the applied side, the Philips lab is working on developing processes and capabilities to test the software in Philips semiconductors.

The fundamental part of Prakash's work at Honeywell is aimed at helping the world move into a new age of ubiquitous computing, where sensors will be everywhere. (These sensors could, for instance, be used to keep an eye on children alone at home or to oversee an automated hazardous industrial process.) The application relates to the actual products that will deliver this.

Prakash grew up at Sriharikota in the shadow of India's satellite launchers and graduated from the S V University College of Engineering, Tirupati, in electronics and communication. He is youthful and informal but personally oversees several key projects. One of them is to drive "ubiquitous computing".

What does that mean? For a sensor to be effective, it has to think and interpret. But sensors are battery-powered and, therefore, cannot do too much of computing, which means the network backing them is critical. To make this happen, Prakash and his team are trying to develop a wireless system that works like one with wires.

Prakash also heads the "adaptive system" group, which is working on radically different systems that will work with minimal human intervention. Such systems might, for instance, be used in oil wells.

Sisodia, barely 26-years-old and hailing from Bhopal, has an MS from IIT-Chennai in computer science. He is looking at ways to use technology to personalise products like television sets.

"The resulting permutations and combinations will simply explode with the advent of the digital era. Software for these appliances will get more complex, and testing such software will be that much more critical," he explains.

Sisodia has three patents and over 40 invention disclosures to his name. Digitisation of various mediums excites him as he feels "digitisation is where the future is.

For example, DVD players currently use a red laser to read data. DVDs of the future will have blue rays that are smaller in width so that more data can be built and read from them."

Prakash and his team have filed 20 patent applications, and will file many more next year.

How advanced is the work taking place in the Indian labs? Says Desai: "The level of research at Philips India is of the highest order as only the Indian lab is involved in analysing new methodologies for software testing and performance analysis."

Philips, for instance, has only 21 researchers in India. But, says Desai: "The entire research on software testing and performance analysis is conducted out of India."