ANNUAL REPORT 2011-2012

ROBOTECH TEAM ROBOTICS CLUB IIT

Indian Delhi 6th September 2012

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Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ...... 3 CERTIFICATE ...... 4 1. Introduction ...... 5 2. Workshops and Orientation ...... 5 2.1 Orientation Session ...... 6 2.2 Theoretical Workshop ...... 6 2.3 Marathon Workshop ...... 7 3. Competitions ...... 8 3.1 The Great War of Mahabharata ...... 8 3.2 Idea Quest ...... 10 4. Various Technical Festivals outside IIT Delhi ...... 11 4.1 Cricbot ...... 11 4.2 Wall-e ...... 12 4.3 Magneto ...... 13 4.4 Inferno ...... 14 4.5 Lumos ...... 15 5. Conclusion ...... 16

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thanks the Digital hardware Design Lab (IIA-502, Bharati Buliding) for providing us required Arduino Borads and different sensors. I would also like to acknowledge Alumni Association of IIT Delhi for giving us Perl Award which reimbursed our travelling cost.

Ankit Laddha Overall Coordinator Robotech team

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CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Robotech team is a part of Robotics Club, IIT Delhi which aims to create a technical atmosphere in institute and develop interest of students in robotics.

In year 2011-12 they have done following activities 1. Organized two Workshops “Introduction to Robotics Club” and “Manual Robot Building” which were attended by over 300 students. 2. Organized two competitions “War of Mahabharata” and “IdeaQuest”. 3. Mentored 5 teams for different national level robotics competitions.

The core members are:

Ankit Laddha Electrical Engineering Overall Coordinator Parijat Mazumdar Electrical Engineering Coordinator Saurabh Runwal Electrical Engineering Coordinator Vinayak Agarwal Electrical Engineering Coordinator

Dr. Kolin Paul Dr. S.K.Saha Faculty Advisor Faculty Advisor Robotics Club, IIT Delhi Robotics Club, IIT Delhi

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1. Introduction Robotics Club is an active platform for students to display and develop their practical machine building skills and knowledge. It is divided into two subgroups Robocon Team and Robotech & Roboholix team. Robocon team concentrates on an International level competition “ABU Robocon”. The other part, Robotech & Roboholix team, is involved in educating students with robot building skills and mentoring them to participate in many nationwide competitions. This team organizes various workshops and competitions to give students the required skill set and also to generate their interest in Robotics. This report provides the details of the yearlong working of the Robotech team. This year we organized two workshops, “Introductory Session to Robotics club” and “Building a manual robot”, and two competitions, “The great War of Mahabharata” and “IdeaQuest”. Apart from these, this year we mentored the maximum number of teams for different nationwide robotics competitions like (annual technical festival of IIT Bombay), (annual technical festival of IIT ), Kshitij (annual technical festival of IIT ) etc. This report begins with the details of workshops organized and then it gives the account of the competitions. After this, it focuses upon the events in which mentored teams had participated and also discusses their achievements.

2. Workshops and Orientation

One of the objectives of Robotech team is to educate students about the field of robotics and providing them the skill set to make their own robots. The Robotics Club, IIT Delhi organizes workshops and orientation sessions for students every year with the aim of introducing them to Robotics, teaching them the basics of building their own robots and providing them with the necessary tools for the same. This year, the workshops were organized in 3 stages: the orientation session, the theoretical workshops and the marathon workshops. Just like every year, the workshops were attended by a large number of students.

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2.1 Orientation Session

The initial orientation session was held on 25th August, 2011. The main purpose of this orientation was to help the students get an essence of what the Robotics Club is all about and also get to know its achievements in the past. This session was graced by our faculty mentor Prof. S.K.Saha, who motivated the students with his words of wisdom. After which there were two sessions, first one was delivered by Vishal Mehta which introduced students to the field of robotics and its application in real life, the second one was given by Ankit Laddha which gave a brief introduction about ABU Robocon, which has been the main focus of our club, and also various technical festivals that are held throughout the year. The students were also given a briefing about the events that would be organised by the Robotics Club throughout the year.

2.2 Theoretical Workshop

The Theoretical Workshop was again attended by a large number of students. This workshop was held on 9th September, 2011 in IILt2. The aim of this workshop was to give the students a basic overview of how to make their own robots and also explain them a few technical aspects that would be helpful to them in the marathon workshops where they were actually going to build bots. This workshop was divided into 2 sessions: Mechanical Session and Electrical Session.

The first part was presented by Vishal Mehta of Mechanical Engineering Department and in this session, the students were introduced to various concepts such as stability, gears, types of wheels, types of robots etc. They were also given a brief introduction on some important aspects that need to be kept in mind while designing mechanical structures.

The above session was followed by Electrical Orientation which was presented by Harveen Kaur of Electrical Engineering Department. In this session the concepts of H-Bridges, different kinds of motors, Relays, IC's etc. were explained to the students. They were also explained the working of the electrical circuit that they would be designing in the marathon workshop, as well as the functioning of major components they would be using.

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2.3 Marathon Workshop

The Marathon workshop was held on 10th and 11th September 2011 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Block II-401. Nearly 60 teams with 5 members per team attended the workshop. Due to the large number of students the teams were divided in 2 groups; the first 30 attending the workshops on the first day and rest of them on the second day. A sum of Rs 1400/- was charged per team and the money was used to give all the components that would be required by the students to make their robot and also was used to make the field for the “The Great War of Mahabharata” competition. Every team was provided with a multimeter, soldering iron with stand, 2 motors, wheels, relays, chassis, diodes, switches and other electrical items.

Initially the students were given a layout of the circuit that they had to make on that day and they were again explained the working of the circuit. Most of the teams had completed the soldering task and assembling the mechanical body by 3 p.m. and later the seniors helped them to debug the circuits. More than 60% of teams were successfully in running their robots.

For the remaining teams who could not make their bots in time a separate doubt clearing session was held on 17th Sept where the seniors helped them to debug their circuits and also solve various difficulties that they were facing while making their bots for the RoboSoccer Competition. Apart from this contact numbers of all the seniors were made available to the students so that they may contact them whenever they faced a problem. Also students were promoted to get into healthy discussions on the and group.

To conclude, this year we saw an unprecedented participation of students in the workshops. We hope that we are able to replicate the same next year and get even a larger response, thereby continuing to promote robotics as a hobby among students.

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3. Competitions We at Robotics Club believe that competitions are the best ways of learning novel ideas and improvising skills. This year also to give students a firsthand experience of participation in a robotics completion and prepare them for different technical competitions across the country we organized two competitions. First one which was “The great war of Mahabharata” which was an extension of the workshops conducted and gave an initial experience of participation in a robotics competition and the kind on rules and work involved in them. The second one was “Idea Quest” which was to select and prepare students for participation in different technical festivals across the nation.

3.1 The Great War of Mahabharata This competition was held inside the Robotics club at the SAC building on 8th October 2011.The Competition saw a huge participation with a total of 20 teams with 5 members each. To participate in the competition the participants had to develop on the manually controlled robot they built in the marathon workshop and extend the robot to include a gripper mechanism that would help them collect tennis balls and deposit them in a pit.

The idea was to provide the participants with an opportunity to work on their own designs and circuits unlike the hands on kit workshop. All the teams are required to make a design for their grippers and then get it approved by the Robotech team seniors.

The competition was divided into three rounds qualifiers, knock outs and finals. The first round, the qualifiers was designed to check it the gripper mechanism functioned properly and the robot was capable of collecting and depositing a ball in the pit. This round had no time constraints. All of the participating teams were qualified for the second round.

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The second rounds checked both the design and speed of the robot. In this round two teams were pitted against one another. The team which deposited the most number of balls in the least time qualified for next round. The final four teams entered into the semi-finals.

The semi-finals and finals apart from testing the design and speed also checked the user control with negative point being allotted for balls that were disturbed but not deposited. After an intense match, team --won the competition.

At the end of completion Trophies were awarded to both the finalist teams and also one prize was given to the best designed robot. The winners of the competition were Nilaykant, Kumar Akash, Anil Rathore, Aditya Singh. The runners up were team Jaws with team members Mayank Sarawagi, Vinit Darda, Vaibhav devmurari, and Shashank kedia. Best designed robot was given to Pushpak Athawale, Mayank Raj, Shreyas Wattamwar, and Akash Anand.

Runner up – War of Mahabharata

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Best Designed Robot – War of Mahabharata

3.2 Idea Quest The idea quest competition was conducted this year to select to mentor them for different technical festivals across the country and provide a much needed exposure to the competitive environment .The problem statements for this competition were directly picked from various technical festivals which includes Techfest, Kshitij and Techkriti. An online forum was set up were the members could discuss the problems among themselves and also with the more experienced member in the club.

In this completion each participant have to submit a solution, in form of a written report, for the given problem statements. The solution should include mechanical designs, Electrical circuitry and algorithms for robot navigation.

A total of 20 reports were evaluated on the basis of feasibility, novelty, relevance and simplicity. Out of the 20 reports 14 were selected. The selected members were divided into two batches. The first batch worked under the guidance of

10 senior members in the winter from 10th to 31st December, 2011 and participated in the techfest held by IIT Bombay from 2-5th January while the second batch worked from 6th to 25th January, 2012 and participated in Kshitij and Techfest held at IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur respectively from 27th to 29th January 2012.

The response of the Idea Quest competition was over whelming with the students taking initiatives to learn something new.

4. Various Technical Festivals outside IIT Delhi One of the most important Aim of Robotech team is to mentor student teams for different technical festivals across the nation. This year also we mentored 5 teams for different competitions. As mentioned previously these teams were selected based on the IdeaQuest Competition organized by the team. Following are the details of the events in which the mentored teams participated and also their performance in their respective events.

4.1 Cricbot rd th Venue and Dates: Techfest, IIT Bomabay, 3 – 5 January, 2012

Problem statement: Make an autonomous robot based on video processing which can field the balls just like fielders in actual cricket match using overhead camera

Team Members: Ankit Laddha, Vinayak Agarwal, Parijat Mazumadar, Meenanashu Aggarwal

Mentored by: Ankit Laddha

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Performance: Finished third in the tournament among 50 teams with appreciation for fastest robot and won Perl award by Alumni Association, IIT Delhi.

Cricbot

4.2 Wall-e rd th Venue and Dates: Techfest, IIT Bomabay, 3 – 5 January, 2012

Problem statement: Make an autonomous robot which can follow a wall without running into obstacles.

Team Members: Piyush Gupta, Nikunj Jain, Mohd. Imran

Mentored by: Saurabh Runwal

Performance: Finished seventh in the tournament.

This event got a huge participation of around 190 teams.

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Wall-E 4.3 Magneto rd th Venue and Dates: Techfest, IIT Bomabay, 3 – 5 January, 2012

Problem statement: Make a robot which can be controlled using hand gestures and finish the given track in least time.

Team Members: Saurabh Runwal, Abhishek Laddha, Shivang Shekhar, Nitish Sharma

Mentored by: Ankit Laddha and Saurabh Runwal

Performance: Not able to qualify for second round but got appreciation for robot design and use of IMU and also awarded Perl award by Alumni Association, IIT Delhi.

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Magneto

4.4 Inferno th th Venue and Dates: Kshitij, IIT Kahragpur, 26 – 28 January, 2012

Problem statement: Build a manually controlled robot or a group of robots which can retrieve people (Cylinders) from buildings affected by fire, bring them to the safety zone and fight fire. The tasks include those done by a fire rescue team.

Team Members: Mohit Agrawal, Nitesh Bharadwaj, Aman Kumar Jha, Romir Moza

Mentored by: Vinayak Agarwal and Parijat Mazumdar

Performance: Not able to qualify for second round but got 4th position in best designed robots among 198 teams.

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Inferno

4.5 Lumos th th Venue and Dates: Techkriti, IIT Kanpur, 26 – 28 January, 2012

Problem statement: Make an autonomous wall following robot which can arrange block with reference to the wall.

Team Members: Shubham Agarwal, Abhishek Gupta, Deepak Mishra, Anil M. Naidu

Mentored by: Vinayak Agarwal and Parijat Mazumdar

Performance: 2nd in first round among around 100 teams and 7th overall.

From above we can see that this year there was a huge participation in various technical festivals. We were not able to secure many successes but we got a great exposure of competitive events. In the coming years we will try our best to win these events.

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5. Conclusion All in all we see that this year was hugely successful as compared to last few years in terms of participation of freshers in the club activities and their participation in on-campus events. The students were very enthusiastic and consequently this led to a lot of participation in various competitions and tech-fests under proper guidance and motivation. This led to very good results in various competitions and the participating students gained valuable experience and exposure to all the current and upcoming technologies, which in turn would lead to the students being better informed and better prepared for ROBOCON.

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