Enthusiasm, passion and the urge to explore robotics and win accolades is a hallmark of a group of students at Bharath University.
The ‘Super Team World Championship Award' at the recently held Robocup 2011 at Istanbul, Turkey, was the icing on the cake for us.
We were an eight-member team and the lone team to represent India at this event that had 1200 teams from 73 countries across the world.
Techie competitor
Our team was a mix of students from all streams of Engineering who designed eight robots using various sensors; three bioloid robots with 18 degrees of freedom and five Lego robots with three degrees of freedom.
The robots were designed to dance and perform as many operations as possible. Programming languages such as C language, C #, robo+ and lejo were used to achieve this coordination. We embedded some creativity in the design by assembling the bioloid robots in the shape of a dog and a spider.
The team participated in two leagues of the event. A league comprises of teams from different countries and we were grouped with Portugal and Singapore. The key challenge here was to coordinate all the robots to respond to the same command given by their master. Three to four robots had danced, performed and coordinated with each other through a single command that won the team a triumph over others.
Vigorous preparations
As it was an international arena, we knew we had to be at our best. Though we started our preparations much ahead of the event, those last few days of the leagues were the most anxious moments as we were determined to make a mark on the international stage.
Extensive research was done for the designing of these robots. We were given only a night's time to map a concept and scenario for the final round the following day.
The effort and hard work put in, helped us pull it off in the final round. At the end of a tough battle, it was a great euphoric feeling, as the tricolour flag was waved high when we were announced champions.
The able guidance of Mr. Senthil Kumar, Professor, EIE Department, and the immense support of our Vice-Chancellor played a vital role in helping us bag the honours.
SRICHARAN SABAT, III Year, ECE, Bharath University
