Volume 2, Issue 1 26th January, 2009

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, DELHI

IITs First Display RobotROBOMUSE -Editor

It has not been long since IIT-Delhi started participating in national robotics competition, ROBOCON and it has gained a great stature in no time. Apart from representing India in International ROBOCON it has consistently performed well. Adding yet another feather to their cap, Robotics Club is ready with its exhibit-bot, ROBOMUSE. RoboMuse was an idea, envisioned by Prof. S.K. Saha. After National Robocon 2008, he proposed to install one of the robots used in Robocon in SAC for public display, so as to increase awareness about robotics. His vision was beautifully executed, with back breaking hard work by Shashank Singla and Prateek Agrawal. The HE- BOT, as the RoboMuse was previously called during ROBOCON 2008 was initially made by the IIT Delhi team( a group of about 22 people) for ROBOCON 2008. It was then taken by Prateek and Shashank and was examined for modifications to be made. The Robot was dethen devised. The mechanism after rigorous testing went into a lot of changes to arrive at the final solution. The next major problem cropped up, when robot was unable to follow the white line due to the surface of the floor. To solve the problem many different surfaces were tried, ranging from painted wooden surface to Vinyl flooring, till we reached at the final solution of acrylic sheets. The next task was to give the user a interface to operate the Robot, for which we came up with an interactive input console with a LCD and some buttons for input. User has to solve a puzzle and enter the answer to see RoboMuse going. Contd..on 3rd page.

ROBODIARY (ROBOMUSE EDITION)

signed to work perfectly just for the duration of the game, which was 3 minutes. The major challenge was to make the robot work for 24x7, which was a very daunting task. A mechanism for 24 hours charging was

ROBOTICS CLUB, IIT DELHI

Our PreparationsROBOCON 2009

- Prashant and Dhananjay
The national robotics competition is held every year in the month of March in Pune. Every year, around 40 prominent engineering colleges of India participate in the competition the winner of which gets a chance to represent in the international Robocon. IIT-D started participating in this event from 2004 and in the very first year it entered into the semifinals. Contd..on 3rd page. Inside this issue: Flashback from the past ROBOCON 2008 Performance in ROBOCON 2008 Team of Robocon 2008 RoboMuse -Technical Details 5 Weird and Amazing Robot Facts 2 2 3 4 4

Compiled & Edited by Shashank Singla , with special inputs from Dhananjay Mishra.

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R O B O D IAR Y ( R O B O M U S E E D IT IO N)

Flashback From the PastROBCON 2008

- Jatin Pasrija
Air was tense in the giant hall that housed the 39 teams participating in the tournament. It was the Showtime! Survival of the fittest! All the efforts that had been put for months had eventually boiled down to our actions in these last three days. The venue was Pune. And it was Robocon2008. Robotics is often thought of to be a dull field, one that lacks the glamour element. Perhaps it is. But things take a different perspective when you are competing against the best teams of the country representing, what is supposed to be, the best technical institute of the country. With a team of 25, ours was one of the biggest teams around. As a result, our pit-area was full of people cutting, drilling, soldering, stripping (wires), programming, and somejust pondering. Pondering was an important task, since only half of our bots were in working order and a couple of teams had a winning strategy in place. The only way to get around the problem was to ensure that if we couldnt complete the game, they didnt either. We were required to immediately build new defensive and blocking robots to survive the quarter finals. Working at the last hour is something every IITian is acquainted with. Still, building a new bot from scratch a few hours before the game sounded like a mighty task. An important thing about being part of a big team is that, apart from the work assigned to you, you dont have to worry about every minute detail of the bot. There are people in the team who are assigned this task of looking at the big picture. And this is why no one panicked, even though we hadnt slept for the last three days. Quarter final with SCOE was perhaps the most interesting of all the matches. The gaming arena, which had a strange similarity with the Colosseum, was packed with spectators- chanting and shouting. SCOE had a new strategy in place, one in which they blocked our main robot, right at the beginning of the game. But we were a step ahead, having caught them practice this strategy a few times last night. This is the advantage of a common practice fieldits difficult to conceal things. So even before the SCOE attacker bot could begin its task, our blocker had docked itself right in the middle of its path. Moments later, there was a collision between the two botsfollowed by oohs and aahs from the crowd. The SCOE attacker was rendered useless from the impact; it could not even start in the next two rounds. And victory was ours! Our victory streak continued till the semis and IIT D was also the most popular team with the crowds (of course after the hosts, MIT Pune), perhaps because of our continued change in strategy with every match. IIT Delhi Robotics club has grown exponentially in the last two years. While there were only 3 first yearites in the team in 2007, it rose to 10 in 2008 and is poised to be even higher in 2009. What is even more significant is that the quality of design and technologies used has also increased at the same rate. Hence Robotics Club, one of IIT-Ds few technical clubs, is here to stayand grow.

Performance In ROBOCON 2008

Awarded the BEST MANUAL ROBOT amongst the non-finalists Reached Semi-finals and stood 4th out of 38 teams Only IIT team to reach super-league of 12 teams

Main PIC (Controller) Board

Initial Design Of Jack

Initial Design of Krish

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TEAM OF ROBOCON 2008

Prof. S.K. Saha
Jainesh Sinha (Team Coordinator) Chinmay Agarwal (Electrical Coordintor) Shashank Singla (Treasurer) Ripudaman Singh (Electrical) Gaurav Mittal (Mechanical) Sanchit Arora (Computer Science) Hemant Kumar (Mechanical) Mohit Sharda (Mechanical) Prateek Agrawal (Electrical) Jatin Pasrija (Electrical) Gaurav Aggarwal (Electrical) Vijay Kumar (Electrical) Danvir Singh (Mechanical) Sanjay Dhakar (Electrical) Abhijeet Rathore (Mechanical) Parag Jain (Electrical) Mayank Kakodkar (Mechanical) Pawan Kumar (Mechanical) Vyom Jain (Mechanical) Kishore Kumar (Mechanical) Vivek Goyal (Computer Science) Arpit Goel (Computer Science)

IITs First Display RobotROBOMUSE

Contd. from Page 1
The mechanical design has been kept almost the same but the electrical circuits and Robots functionality has been completely changed. The initial gripper mechanism to grip and pick objects has been removed due to space constraints and its task has been reduced to just follow the line through light sensors. Some Music has also been added to amuse our viewers. Once the task of making the robot was complete it was time to showcase the robot in a beautiful casing. This task too was taken up by our budding Robotics Club entrants, instead of outsourcing it. Shashank , Prateek and a team of about 10 new entrants of Robotics Club completed the acrylic box on 18th November, just before the Majors. The robot was then placed for some real time testing in SAC on 1st December. Now was the time for celebration, and the complete team celebrated the moment with Prof. Saha and Prof. Subarao (BRCA President).And today, 26th January is the day when, Dr. Surendra Prasad, Director, IIT Delhi is going to officially inaugurate the Robot, for permanent display of the

IITs first display Robot ROBOMUSE.

Nevertheless, we are not resting on our laurels and the stage is set for this years National Robocon to be held in Pune from the 6th of March. The entire team is working very hard to bring the glory again by winning the chance to represent India in Tokyo. Read more in the article about ROBOCON 2009 At this point of time Robomuse is standing all alone in SAC but if things go planned then it will soon have a partner.

HE-BOT

Our PreperationsROBOCON 2009

Contd. from Page 1
It also won the Robocon in 2007 and represented India in Hanoi, Vietnam. Apart from that IIT-D entered semifinals in the year 2006 and 2008 and got the best Manual-Bot award in both the years. Undoubedly, IIT-D has been very consistent in its performance since the very beginning. Now the stage is set for the National Robocon 2009 and the entire team is working day and night, well more like chilly nights, to reach a new height. The theme of this year competition is WALK TOGETHER FOR THE VICTORY DRUMS. The theme is based on old Japanese tradition in which two men used to carry somebody in the palanquin (a paalki). On similar lines, a manual and an automatic bot has to carry an automatic traveler bot through a series of obstacles to finally beat the drums. Both the mechanical and electrical team is working very hard to test the bots on a replica of the original field. This years team, with 36 members, is bigger than ever. Yet, the coordination between the teammates is noteworthy, which has resulted in sturdier and better functioning robots. The strategy of the game has been decided and all of us are now just waiting for the competition, hoping to put our best in Robocon 2009 so that we could represent India this year internationally.

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R O B O D IAR Y ( R O B O M U S E E D IT IO N)

RoboMuseTechnical Details
- Shashank Singla
RoboMuse is an Line following electro-mechanical robot, typically consisting of three main subsystems: The drive system, an array of sensors, and the control system. It integrates several different disciplines of engineering, ranging from electrical to meChassis The chassis needs to hold two motors, sensors, circuit and the power supply. It has been made using aluminum. The robustness and flexibility of the robot depends on the chassis. Alongside is the CAD drawing of RoboMuse. Motors We have used 3 DC motors in total. 2 have been used for a differential Drive and the 3rd motor has been used to move the charging rod up and down with a help of a pulley. The DC motors work on 24 Volts and their power Motors Drivers Mosfet Motor Divers with 10 Ampere rating have been used for each motor. The Brain We have used microcontroller. PIC 18F4550, a very powerful chip, as the controller. A robot demands a lot of processing power and lot of multiprocessing tasks (good set of timers), this PIC has got it all. The feedbacck from sensors reach the controller on basis of which the motor drivers are then operated to control the robot. 24x7 charging A provision for 24x7 charging of the batteries (24V DC) is provided. When the robot comes to rest state, it dock into the charging station and the metallic projection from the robot draws power from the charging station. So when the robot is not moving, it is in a battery charging mode with an auto cut-off. Input Console An input console is placed outside the glass setup. It contains an LCD screen and a few buttons to feed in the code which is used to start motion of the robot . The input console is controlled by a Microcontroller which also contains an RF transmitter module to send commands to the robot to start its motion. Sensors We have used 6 red light colour sensors to follow the white lin. They have been placed on the base of the robot. LCD Screen LCD is an extremely handy debugging tool. We have used a 16x2 LCD .We have also placed a LCD on the user console. Power Supply We have used 2 rechargeable batteries with ratings 12 volts , 2 Ampere Hour to supply power to the robot. Wireless Remote Control We have used Rf Module for wireless communication with the robot.

5 Weird and Amazing Robot Facts

-Internet
1. Elektro, the worlds first humanoid robot, debuted in 1939. Built by Westinghouse, the seven-foot-tall walking machine spoke more than 700 words. Elektro later appeared in the 1960 B movie Sex Kittens Go to College. 2. The first known case of robot homicide occurred in 1981, when a robotic arm crushed a Japanese Kawasaki factory worker. 3. Leonardo da Vinci drew up plans for an armored humanoid machine in 1495. Engineer Mark Rosheim has created a functional miniature version for NASA to help colonize Mars 4. Archytas of Tarentum, a pal of Platos, built a mechanical bird driven by a jet of steam or compressed airarguably historys first robotin the fifth century B.C. 5. There are currently 4,000 robots serving in the US Military, including reconnaissance Talon bots that scout for roadside bombs in Iraq and PackBots that unsuccessfully poked around for Osama bin Ladens hideout in Afghanistan. To know more about us visit our webpage: http://paniit.iitd.ac.in/~iitdr/ or email at shashank.singla@gmail.com