The finals of a national level robotics competition being organised by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will be held in the city over three days, from October 28. A total of 240 colleges submitted the initial proposal. Of them, 14 have been selected to compete in the finals and given Rs.1 lakh each for their project. They are required to build autonomous robots, which would be able to perform the given task without any human involvement or remote controlled devices. The autonomous vehicles built by the students would be evaluated in a simulated cross-country terrain at the Combat Vehicles Research & Development Establishment (CVRDE), Avadi.
P.Sivakumar, Director, CVRDE said that the selected student teams were asked to build an off-road autonomous robotic platform capable of navigating rough terrain, performing complex manoeuvres and avoiding natural and man-made obstacles in the least possible time.
According to him, the competition would drive not only the development of intelligent self-actuating robotic hardware and on-board software, but also focus on innovation in design, fault tolerant architecture and human-robot interaction. The event is being jointly organised by four DRDO laboratories which actively work in the field of robotics and unmanned vehicles. “Since youngsters have an amazing potential to innovate, the competition might evolve interesting applications which will then be adopted in DRDO projects,” said Mr.Sivakumar.
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