Continuing its winning streak, AcYut 4, the humanoid developed by students of BITS Pilani has won prizes at both Robocup Iran 2011 and Robogames 2011 held in Tehran and San Francisco respectively. At these events, AcYut 4 displayed advance technical abilities and motor abilities in both autonomous and non-autonomous categories.
The team from BITS Pilani comprised Akash Gupta (Team Leader, III Year B.E. Mechanical), Tushar Agrawal (II Year, B.E. Computer Science), Apoorv Shrivastava (I Year, B.E. Mechanical), Deepak Gopinath and Dhairya Seth (Both I Year, B.E. Computer Science).Speaking about the competitions and AcYut 4's performance, Akash Gupta says, “We are extremely happy with AcYut 4's performance at Robocup Iran and Robogames. With an autonomous nature, AcYut 4 has a skeletal structure close to a human being due to the combination of a walking algorithm and an image processor. We have achieved these motor abilities using a six inertial measurement unit that detects external forces and allows the humanoid to balance its actions based on the environment.”
At Robocup Iran 2011, AcYut 4 successfully walked three meters, detected the white finish line autonomously and returned to the starting point. Competing with 35 humanoids from across the globe, AcYut 4 was the only humanoid robot that completed the task.
In San Francisco at Robogames 2011, AcYut 4 participated in two different categories of tasks. In the autonomous category, AcYut 4 had to identify a weightlifting bar and walk with it for 30 cm. The second part of this task involved AcYut lifting the weight bar above its head and walk another 50 cm. In the non-autonomous (freestyle) category, the humanoid had to demonstrate getting up from a lying position and walking at various speeds.
Built with two embedded microprocessors, AcYut functions with a processing power of 1.72 GHz. The microprocessors are assembled in a unique structure that allows one of the two processors to process images so that the humanoid can detect objects of various shapes and colours. The observed data is then processed with the help of a second microprocessor in the form of data packets that allow motor movements of the humanoid.
