Our novel creation — “RoboTruck” won accolades at the Robocup Singapore 2011 competition, and another feather in the cap for us Bharath University students. This time round, it was more challenging, as we had already bagged “Best performance for Innovation award” last year.
Senthil Kumar, Professor, Department of Electronics and Instrumentation and Jaishankar Bharatharaj, Technical support, from ROBOIN, encouraged us to explore and challenged us to present something unique and different.
Rescue mission
The last three days before going to Singapore were memorable, as we had a great time experimenting, learning and interacting at the Robotics lab. We participated in six events: Rescue – Major; Standard Premier League; @Home; Dance Co-Space; Dance Secondary; Rescue — Junior.
It was great interacting with other teams and we also got an opportunity to exchange ideas. Just a day before our competition, India won the cricket world cup and we created a slogan: “India won the cricket word cup and India will win the Robocup, let us work for that”
The competition was extremely tough. We came first in the Rescue major Category with RoboTruck, which was designed to perform in all weather and land conditions. It's operated by a wireless communication system and can run as far as two to three km.
It outperformed other robots with the advantage of a powerful sensor that scans minute details and beats obstructions. The rescue robot can bring out people from collapsed buildings and obstructions.
We also secured the second place in the Soccer Premier League and @Home with Nao Robot.
Goal
The Nao Robot is a humanoid robot that can identify its master and follow instructions provided. It can also be used in the home environment for service needs. The humanoid has three fingers that act as a gripper.
Nao Robot in the Soccer Cup was designed to identify the goal post of its own.
We also attended a workshop in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU), and were taught the latest technologies, implementations and achievements, which were indeed very useful for further research.
Baljeet is a IV year Mechanical Engineering student at Bharath Institute of Science and Technology.
