A team of four engineering students from the Royal College of Science and Technology in Phuentsholing, Bhutan, has made it to the finals of the e-Yantra robotics competition at IIT Bombay.
The competition opened registrations to students from Nepal and Bhutan last year, while recently, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) selected it as one of the four projects to set up base in Afghanistan. IIT Bombay has offered to set up 10 e-Yantra laboratories in Afghanistan, and by July this year, the competition will be open to Afghan students.
“The King of Bhutan is taking special interest in revamping the education system,” said Professor Kavi Arya, principal investigator, e-Yantra. He was part of a delegation invited to suggest a revamp of the baccalaureate system of Bhutan. He said, “Among the pillars of an ideal education system that we discussed were skill development in technology. The government was interested in seeing what e-Yantra could do there, in terms of hands-on training.” This year, Prof. Arya is looking at setting up e-Yantra labs to teach robotics to Bhutanese students.
Tenzing Choephel, who is in his final year of information technology at the Royal College of Science and Technology, said his team had been preparing in earnest for the finals. He said, “We haven’t even had lunch today.” He put their selection down to hard work and team effort. “It’s quite an achievement for us, to come to a world-renowned institute like IIT.”
The level of competence among other teams has been daunting, but “we’re hoping for the best and preparing for the worst,” he said, with a laugh.
The MHRD-sponsored e-Yantra Robotics Competition, now in its seventh year, gives students a real-world problem and aims to teach engineering skills. Participants are provided with the kit, training and guidance, travel allowance, and boarding and lodging at IIT Bombay for the finals.
Paid summer internship
This year, the overall theme is ‘Jungle Safari’, which uses technology to mimic the behaviour of birds, insects and animals. Of the 28,692 registrations (7,173 teams), 41 teams have made it to the finals, which have seven themes.
The winners will get a six-week paid summer internship, where they will pair up with different teams on technical projects and have e-Yantra mentors guide them. They will also train in soft skills, and attend theatre workshops, meditation sessions, and lectures on history, besides being taken to heritage sites. At the end of this, each team will exhibit their creation.
Prof. Arya calls it a ‘transformational experience’. “Our goal is to scale this up. We put our engineering education in too many silos: electrical, computer science, mechanical. But an engineer is a person who solves societal problems. We need people who can chase a problem into whatever domain it leads them to.”
The themes combine challenging technical skills that the students need to master, with a bit of fun through story-telling. Among other things, the participants learn image processing, how to use robotic operating systems, signal processing for audio, build a complex control system and do augmented reality. “Essentially, they employ a wide variety of skills relevant to their employability,” says Prof. Arya. Also, they are appreciating the fact that engineering is fun. Passing exams is not as much fun as building stuff.”
The competition often throws up surprise wins. Last year, a team of four students from Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray Polytechnic in West Bengal made it to the finals. The theme had students design a 3D autonomous snake robot using open source software and to then 3D print the snake, integrate it with electronics and solve a problem set by e-Yantra. The team won in direct competition with students from the best colleges in India, reflecting the fact that our educational institutions and employers give undue weightage to performance in exams, says Prof. Arya. “Any good engineer should be able to visualise a problem, break it down using complex technology on his own, and also show teamwork, time management, commitment, and persistence.”
The growth in registrations to the contest to 28,692 this year from 4,500 in 2012 despite a 30% fall in engineering college seats in the period, are a testament to this, he says.
The seven themes
Ant Bot:
A bot emulates an ant living in a colony, performing its tasks diligently.
Nutty Squirrel:
A squirrel builds itself an elevator mechanism to ease its load-carrying capacity.
Thirsty Crow:
This one is from the children’s story of the crow who fills a pitcher with pebbles, done in an augmented reality theme. The robot acts as a crow, and the pitcher is modelled by a placeholder with a code that can be read. The participants have to superimpose a three-dimensional model of the crow on the robot and do the same with the pitcher, on the arena. On a video screen, the robot flaps its wings and drops pebbles into the pitcher.
Hungry Bird:
A drone mimics the flight and food-gathering skills of a mother bird for her fledglings, avoiding obstacles along the way.
Mocking Bot:
Teams construct a device that ‘listens’ to a tune and imitates it on a ‘homemade’ electronic piano and trumpet.
Pollinator Bee:
The teams showcase their drone-control skills by simulating the flight of a bee and completing an electronic circuit in flight to act as a switch to glow the colour of a flower, indicating pollination.
Homecoming:
The first theme using machine learning, where a wild animal has to come to its habitat.
