Nirmala Institute of Technology Robocon champion

“Su che,saru che,Robocon hamro che!” (What’s up,all’s well,Robocon is ours!) was the slogan of the Nirma Institute of Technology from Ahmedabad and the team stuck to this dictum and bagged the first place at Robocon ’11. The three-day event which concluded on Saturday saw teams from nearly 58 colleges battle it out.

Robocon 11 organised by the Maharashtra Academy of Engineering (MAE),Alandi,is a National Robotics Contest which judges the technical skills of students in the area of robotics. This year’s contest was based on the theme of the Thai tradition of Loy Krathong of honouring the goddess of the river. The krathong is usually a small boat of banana stems and leaves,which is released into the river. This year,a thermocol krathong was to be balanced by autonomous and manual robots on a bridge,similar to the traditional Thai custom. While all competing teams had their best robots out for action,the robots from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Nirma Institute of Technology,Ahmedabad,were the ones which made it to the finals.

“Our robots were fast,intelligently programmed and stable,which is why we won,” said Assistant Professor Keyoor Shah of Nirma Institute of Technology,who assisted the team during the contest. “We took nearly three months to build our robots. After a lot of simulations and iterations did we come up to this algorithmically sound model.”

The Best Idea trophy went to IIT Bombay for their autonomous robot,which also bagged the Best Innovative Design award. The Best Economical robot award went to the autonomous robot by Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI),Mumbai while the Best Manual Operator award went to College of Engineering,Pune.