The Automobile Engineering Students Who Put EV Regenerative Braking Into a Physiotherapy Machine: Parul University’s Therapeutic Leg Rehabilitation Device

Most people assume an automobile engineer builds cars. The four students behind Parul University’s Therapeutic Leg Rehabilitation Device built something a hospital physiotherapy room would recognise sooner than a garage would. Led by P.V. Adarsh and Meher Chaitanya, the team from 2022 to 2026 batch at Tech Automobile Engineering started by adapting the energy-recovery concept, in which hybrid and electric vehicles recover energy that is typically wasted, for a therapeutic leg rehabilitation device. The Therapeutic Leg Rehabilitation Device, from Parul University, is now patented and has therefore become a good example of a concept moving beyond its engineering field of origin. The team came from across the country: Adarsh from Mumbai and Mehreet from Hyderabad both spoke about the university’s importance in encouraging students to think outside the box and develop talents beyond their regular subjects. Meher remembers how the university culture impacted him and his teammates, encouraging them to think beyond finding a job and start their own company. With that industry-oriented mindset, the engineering idea to a physical product to a market; the team later expanded from the automotive to the healthcare industry.

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The team did not start with physiotherapy. They started with electric mobility.

Prior to the rehabilitation device, they were researching the technologies of electric vehicle systems and renewable energy, including a problem-based learning project on converting construction machinery (e.g., drilling or lifting machinery) to electric and another initiative to utilise nanotechnology in the development of surfaces for solar electric vehicle systems. That’s the solar idea, Meher says, which was deemed at the time not economically viable due to the manufacturing cost; technically viable ideas must be tested for cost, usability, and market demand. The lesson influenced all subsequent lessons.

The rehabilitation device was an idea that came to us when we saw physiotherapy equipment and saw two things. Rehabilitation equipment can be costly, making it a significant obstacle for clinics and smaller health care providers. Second, a rehabilitation device involves repeated, guided motion, and motion is exactly what regenerative braking is built to recover energy from. Putting regenerative energy into a therapeutic device, rather than leaving it as an automotive feature, became the core of the project.

As described in the published patent application, the device brings several functions into one system rather than leaving them to separate machines. Its proposed features include:

• A motorized pedaling linkage for controlled leg movement, with a guided limb-movement mechanism
• Vibration-generating elements for muscle stimulation
• Health and motion monitoring, including motion and facial-expression imaging and medical-report scanning
• A display panel showing sensor information through one interface, plus communication capabilities
• Motorised mobility features and components intended to support user stability during operation

The design intent was to make the equipment easier to operate by bringing information from different sensors into a common dashboard, so an operator does not have to manage every part of the process separately. It is worth being precise: these are proposed features set out in a patent application and a developing prototype, not verified clinical claims. The contribution the team is making is a documented design concept that combines motorized movement, rehabilitation support, monitoring, and energy regeneration in one affordable-minded package.

The invention was filed on 21 May 2026 and published on 17 July 2026 in the Patent Office Journal under the name of Therapeutic Leg Rehabilitation Device, and the applicant is Parul University. In addition to the named inventors, Adarsh Venkatesh Peddintti and Conjeevaram Venu Gopal Meher Chaitanya Mudaliar, there are other team members and mentors. The difference that’s important and easy to miss that exists is between a published patent application and granted patent. The publication of the invention puts the invention on the public record and is a step in the process, but the exclusive rights of a patent are only established when and if the application is examined, and a patent is granted. The honest status of this device is that it is published, documented, and still moving through the system, which is itself a real achievement for an undergraduate team.

What has kept the project moving beyond the filing is that the four co-inventors have organised themselves into a startup-style structure with defined responsibilities. The inventors, as recorded, and the roles they have taken on are

• Hrithik Makwana as Chief Executive Officer, handling procurement, manufacturing, and legal responsibilities
• Adarsh Venkatesh Peddintti as Chief Technology Officer, also contributing to procurement and component sourcing
• Conjeevaram Venu Gopal Meher Chaitanya Mudaliar (Meher Chaitanya) as Chief Marketing and Operations Officer, leading market research, communication with healthcare professionals, and operations
• Kadarla Rishindra Chary handling finance and design

The team was perfectly planned with a technology lead, operations and marketing lead, finance and design lead, and chief executive who will run manufacturing and legal for an undergraduate project, and it reflects the team’s ambition to get past the patent stage and into a product.

The research behind the application was wider than a typical student project. The team reviewed more than 50 research articles and patent sources before filing and deliberately looked beyond India, studying patent information from Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States because they were considering international markets eventually. Because the inventors come from an engineering background, medical terminology was a genuine hurdle, so they sought guidance from people with medical knowledge, including faculty mentors and family members, to make sure the device made sense clinically as well as mechanically.

Meher Chaitanya led the market side, drawing on earlier marketing work in his family’s real estate business and a stint as a relationship manager at a Bengaluru real estate firm. He interacted with doctors across Gujarat, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and other states and deliberately explained the device in plain, practical terms rather than technical jargon, on the principle that a sophisticated product still has to be understood by the people who will recommend or use it. The team also ran roughly 70 surveys with physiotherapists and doctors, including some respondents outside India, and reported that some clinics expressed interest in using the equipment if it became commercially available. Noticing a real problem, affordable rehabilitation equipment, and researching a market before building a business is exactly the kind of business-ready instinct that Parul University’s innovation ecosystem, including PIERC, is built to support.

The team presented the device at Tech Expo, Parul University’s graduating-student project showcase for engineering. The members are candid that the first presentations were hard because they were nervous explaining their work and that it got easier with repetition. They are equally candid about the result: the project received recognition at the event but did not take the top position. That honesty fits the actual arc of the project, which is still developing rather than finished. The device is currently at the Minimum Viable Product stage, and the team is clear that cost is the central challenge. A single component such as a motor can swing the final price, so if a major part becomes expensive or needs replacement, the product can slip out of reach for the clinics it is meant for. The team has therefore been working on budgeting, financing, and production planning, aware that moving from a prototype to mass production introduces its own challenges, and is trying to plan production and marketing strategy ahead of that stage rather than after it.

The team is also exploring a next generation of features, though it treats these as research directions rather than things the device already does. They include neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), which the team notes would require proper clinical evaluation before being incorporated; AI-based report generation to track patient performance; load cells to measure the force a patient can apply; and the integration of virtual reality and gamification so that repetitive rehabilitation movements could feel like cycling through a forest or paddling a boat. The team has expressed interest in collaborating with a large technology organization such as Tata for support on AI integration and looks further out at other medical devices, including robotic surgery equipment and products for patient comfort and positioning, each still at the evaluation stage.

For Meher Chaitanya, the project is not only commercial. He has spoken about an accident that left him bedridden for around three months, an experience that gave him a direct view of how difficult recovery can be and how much rehabilitation matters, and he became one of the early users to test the team’s device. That personal history, he says, is why the team’s primary focus is on improving patient outcomes and reducing a patient’s dependence on others during recovery, rather than on the commercial possibilities alone. It is a reminder that the most durable reason to build a rehabilitation device is often having needed one.

The team has two direct mentors. Mr. Omkamal Vashi took the technical aspects and made the students familiar with hybrid and electric mobility to help them relate engineering knowledge with a practical problem. On the physiotherapy side, Dr. Didhiti Omkamal Vashi led the team, which learned about the characteristics required of a rehabilitation device in practice. That combination of one mentor for the engineering side and one for the clinical application has been the key to an automobile engineering team creating something that was viable for a healthcare context and not just a machine that made sense to engineers. The role of Adarsh at Tata is an automobile engineering role where he is a car insurance consultant and reviews the vehicle inspection report against insurance requirements, which, apart from being a real job for him, also allows him to continue his contribution to the team’s startup activities. Their suggestions for other students are all the same: look at the problem instead of the pain, and note the problems around you, even the ones you have faced. Learn the problem thoroughly, ask for feedback from faculty and from others with experience, and overcome the fear of presenting. It’s not enough to know the technical facts; you have to be confident in your explanation. A patent, as Meher says, is a grant of authority to an invention, but it’s the value of innovation that makes it actually useful to people.

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