A different take on Robotics

Robotics always brings our attention to programming and electronics.However, equally important is the mechanical aspects of the robot, which is the first step towards good and effective robotics.In the following article, I would like to support my statement by sharing one of my memories.The best experience I have had till date is my involvement in Robocon in my first year at IIT Kanpur.I consider myself honoured and very lucky to be part of this great team and the great things we achieved together.

(Go through the Robocon 2016 problem statement to further improve your reading experience)

It all started in September 2015 when we had the recruitment of first yearites.It was one of the first inductions into a team of IITK for our batch, so there was a lot of buzz and a large number of people turned up for the tests. Somehow, I managed to clear the tests and interviews and that was the beginning of something special.

The first month was dedicated to train us,the new members to specialize in one of the three fields-design and manufacturing,electronics and coding.So, I took up the first one and learnt SolidWorks and AutoCAD, which helped us to convert our ideas into viable designs.We also got to know about some basic manufacturing techniques like cutting(using Hacksaw as well as Waterjet),turning, milling,filing,drilling and tapping,etc . We had several brainstorming sessions where our seniors taught us how to approach designing a robot with an engineering common sense.

The winter was when we started working towards the problem statement. I was mostly involved with the hybrid robot . In designing so, we faced many challenges.Since, it was manually driven for some part of the circuit,we had to consider drivability and maneuverability.Since the robot had to be equipped with a lot other electronics sensors and boards, we needed to have a good space management to have good weight balance. So, we came up with a double decker, rear wheel drive chassis which turned employing the differential drive.The toughest problem was the robot had to climb a pole.So, we planned to have an open structure so that the pole could enter from one side.Then we placed 3 pneumatic pistons ,whose ends were equipped with three motor-powered wheels.The idea was so that when the pistons actuated , the wheels would press against the pole and the motor would power the wheels to climb up. This simple idea had many unforeseen problems,which we discovered subsequently as we built and tested prototypes.This was the classic case of difference between what is theory (which was governed by our codes ) and what actually happens in practice(the electeonics and chassis capabilities). Firstly, the pneumatic system was so powerful that it distorted the whole chassis to such an extent that it would fail after a few cycles of climbing. So, we redesigned the chassis with further reinforcements and included a locking mechanism so that the chassis would become a closed structure once the pole had entered to the middle of the robot.Another problem we faced was ,due to slight mis-alignment of pole-climbing wheels, the robot would rotate, tilt or even slip while climbing, which created further problems in placing the flag at the top.We tackled this problem with a novel idea of using wheels which had curvature same as that of the pole. This considerably improved the contact patch and solved the previous problems to a great extent, if not completely.In January, we decided to build a final chassis since a lot of testing and changes had gone to the initial chassis and it was starting to suffer cracks and fatigue. It was classic clockwork and we built the second chassis within 4-5 days.By the end of February , we could complete the problem statement consistently below 90 seconds on our practice arena.

Our team was always one of the respectable ones but we lacked bits and pieces,here and there which never made us a strong contenders for the win in the past. But this time,we left for Pune with very high hopes,owing to all the hardwork we had put in in past 4 months and the fact that we had completed the problem statement with such precision ,perhaps, for the first time.But when we reached the arena, we were robbed of our sleep when we saw some of the teams outperformed us in the practice sessions.We had no plans of giving up and we worked almost all the time for a couple of days.We changed our stratergies, changed a few design aspects , and dealt with a few teething issues on the way and reduced our total time to around 60 seconds.

From outclassing some of the lightweights in the early stages to beating some big teams narrowly, we found our hardwork finally showing up at the main stage and that pure joy can’t be expressed in words.We had to face the best team in the semifinal and so we set up our robot on the limits ,and wished for a small mistake from rivals to pounce upon.We eventually ended up third, as we lost the semi-finals,but it was close and could have gone either way.The loss was bitter but we knew, we had extracted every bit of performance our chassis had on offer.The positives overshadowed the pain of loss and it only increased the hunger to build upon this success next time around.

I repeat, I was lucky to be a part of this team and meet such seniors and alumnis who helped me all along the journey and helped the team progress in the right direction.It was a lovely experience where one could witness all sorts of emotions,the way we handled pressure ,worked in harmony. Such strong was the spirit inside the team,the passion and commitment everyone showed in the team was just unreal, and everyone of us still feels proud to say “Robocon is Love, Robocon is Life”.