A team of engineering students from Sona College of Technology in Salem won the MECA Global Finals 2026, a manufacturing automation competition organized by Mitsubishi Electric and held in Tokyo.
The Indian team emerged as the overall winner after competing against the national teams of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines and Thailand.
The four-member team comprising Tharanika K, Seralathan R, Vijay B and Tarana AS had earlier won the 6th National Level Mitsubishi Electric Cup held in Pune in February 2026.
They introduced an intelligent programmable logic controller (PLC) programming assistant designed for Mitsubishi Electric automation systems.
The solution allows engineers to describe the intended behavior of a machine in plain English, which AI then converts into industrial PLC code.
This can eliminate manual coding that requires specialized technical knowledge, reduce development time, and make it easier to identify and correct errors, especially during machine commissioning.
“The Sona College team has created a tool that allows an engineer to describe the behavior of a factory machine in plain English, and AI turns that description into working PLC code. The prototype received the jury’s approval and passed the jury’s rigorous questioning,” Choco Valliappa, Vice Chairman, Sona Institutions.
Published September 16, 2026