To future coordies...
Read this to take a few steps backwards in time, but, in our shoes :) —
Post-Tenure Clarity :P — A Few Grains of Gratitude
Looking back at the whole tenure, there are many things that I am grateful about:
First and foremost, my co-coordinators.
I got 2 best friends for life. I trust them and know them better than anyone else on campus and vice versa. We happen to be 3 entirely different people by personality, we somehow always manage to have 3 different angles on the same topic and still always manage to come to a common conclusion (sometimes after bitter fights, but eh), that everyone agrees with. The only thing that unites us is our love for technology and ambition to take this club to a higher level and, honestly, that’s all that matters—A common vision.
I learnt that you need to accommodate your fellow Coordi, so that they always feel heard. They may not be always be able to put in the same amount of work as you do but learn to let that go, because they will cover for you when you are not able to give time (you aren’t superhuman to be able to do anything perfectly alone, so yes you are gonna need them just as much as they need you—trust them). All in all—It was a character-building arc. We are far more confident humans now.
Secondly, amazing secys.
There were a lot of moments where our secys made us feel proud.
- Golden spending 3 days straight working on GyroBot during Summer,
- Shivansh working on Testbot with his Phone flashlight even when the electricity was out,
- Chinar keeping the club organised with his index and “DON’T BE A RETARD” warning,
- Soumyajit cleaning the impossible-to-clean whiteboard as if it were his own,
- Arbaaz and his tireless efforts on the Inverted Pendulum, teaching Y24s to etch PCBs and trying to fix the speaker for days.
All this kept us motivated to keep running the club.
Thirdly, Campus response:
From the moment when L7 filled up for Robotics101, when 600 people signed up for the workshop, when Robodive test papers ran out in L20 to when 150 people joined the IGVC task submission group. All these moments make us feel like we have created an impact on a significant number of people. These peaks—however satisfying—were not possible without the first 2 things.
Lastly, Our ex-coordies.
We are thankful to the Y21 and Y20 (and other) coordinators. We sought their advice on lots of major decisions throughout the tenure and they were always ready to help. It is only because they trusted us, we got through the tenure. This drive contains a lot of notes and tips by past coordies that inspired us.
A Mid-Tenure Crisis—Honours and Hardships of the Hardware Entities
This bit is a realisation I had post Inter-IIT, a time where we had to interact with other entities and felt some differences. This led us to asking a lot of questions and trying to answer them…
What are the current Hardware entities in IITK today?
AUV, Aerial, Aeromodelling Club, E-club, ERA, Humanoid, IIT KMS, RASET, Robotics Club (and Vision?)
What are they working on?
Underwater robots, Drones, Airplanes, Electronics, Robo-Soccer, Human-like bots, F1-cars, Rockets, everything else, and Ground vehicles.
Like any student body, we work on cool projects. So what’s different? In the era of open source and AI-ML projects, where anyone can install python and VS code and print their first “hello world” in a matter of minutes. One can set off with projects involving designing, consulting and programming with just a laptop and good surfing skills.
Hardware on the other hand, requires a long term plan. Even the simplest RC car requires 10 different electronic and mechanical components to be sourced from usually more than one place and then if all components are compatible and not defective (or chinese :P). One can assemble it successfully. Then after a few library installations, and a little bit of surfing and typing, one can get the car moving (until something blows up). If you ever went through the process of building something from scratch, you probably recall that one incident where you spent hours trying to get something to work and then discovered one loose wire or one bug in the code that just magically got things running. Some even probably blew up a component or 2 in the process. If one has been in hardware long enough, at some point you probably even made up your mind to quit and never return for good. You also probably regret spending endless money on soldering irons, jumper wires, motor drivers and batteries, where instead you could have been streaming your favourite Web-Series while your ML model was training, for free.
So why even bother doing hardware?? There is no placement or intern in building RC cars or coding them. In contrast, there is a surge in demand for ML engineers. Everyone wants an LLM interface for everything. Let’s face it, hardware is hard and expensive and people seem to function just fine without humanoid robots interfering or without drones hovering around them. Au contraire, Software is easier, and people cannot seem to even get their homework done without ChatGPT.
So what are these 10 entities doing? and moreover, WHY? While our projects may look like a ball of wires and frame of shafts, we relish the moments it took us to get them working, and truly appreciate the complexity that it embodies, all from scratch. And well… someone has to do it.
Now, What next?? Isn’t the smart thing to do is bring AI and ML together with hardware, A wholesome project, won’t that consist? This is where I appeal or put my suggestion that the council come together and collaborate on larger projects where hardware entities contribute simultaneously and equally as software can.
Why is that not happening right now, one might ask? The council seems to have another 10 entities for ML AI and other software Applications. An effect that we need to keep in account is the effect of COVID. The pandemic shut down Hardware entities for almost 2 years. The knowledge and practices of our seniors were not effectively transferred to juniors; Especially, When it comes to manufacturing intensive projects where knowing how to use tools like drills and lathe was taught by seniors in workshops. Moreover, the full potential of existing inventory was lost. Our club has projects and components worth more than 10 Lakhs but unfortunately we were not told its purpose or why they were bought. Secondly, the learning curve is slower in hardware with a huge entry barrier, one finds it hard to develop any useful expertise with just second year and third year projects. First years were not actively allowed to contribute or given access to clubs before, but in the coming batches, increasing involvement of freshers will lead to better quality and scale of projects.
So, Are we getting better? Yes, lol, It is commendable that entities have revived the culture of doing-by-hand slowly but successfully over the last 2 yearsAnd the second problem is being addressed by Winter programmes like Winter Camp and Robodive…. Well this is just a start and there’s yet a long way to go.
A Stunted-Tenure-Start
Roboclub is dead, Coordi banna kyun hai and bohot zyada kaam hota hain Coordi ko were 3 constant things I was told before I got involved in the club. I admit that I signed up for this rather half-heartedly, hoping that the other 3 will work a bit and fearing that the other 3 might just vanish mid way. Our personal ambitions—intern, CPI, projects etc already had us worried so much that the club was least of our concerns. We just wanted to get the bare minimum done, itna ki secys humein gaali na de.
[march:]
When congratulated on selection, with total regret in our hearts, we made a pre-term report, budget and summer project proposal. Each of which seemed to add to our anxieties. Our summer project recruitment numbers were terrible in comparison to most clubs. Our budget had hardly increased. No one wanted to willingly co-mentor our summer-projects. We were in for doom, that too—alone. So what turned things around? (Drum roll) THE hackathon. [uhm, story time]
Now, THE hackathon was one of Aayush’s many ideas (including Robodive). He is an ML enthusiast working at the-tuf-to-get-Vipul-Arora-Lab, who got interested when he saw the Amex Super Bowl Campus Challenge notification. He wanted 2 more people who were half as interested in tech as he was and could not find any better options who were on campus other than us. With no visible loss in this opportunity we 3 signed up for this hackathon; After all, this seemed to only add to our aforementioned personal ambitions.
Thus we started to spend time getting together each night to work on the ML model submissions for the hackathon. With time, we started to get to know each other better and the work element started to go down. We would spend countless hours talking about ourselves, our situations and how we ended up here. We were surprised at how well our wavelengths seemed to match. We started to enjoy each other’s companies so much that the hackathon performance didn’t really matter much anymore. Subtle flex: We still managed to do better than Pclub, BCS, ICG wali team, thus laying the start of a “Roboclub is Best” idea. I was lucky to have found company in my intern prep as it was rather lonely on campus during summers. Thanks to this hackathon, I ended up landing my summer internship at AMEX.
This hackathon managed to unite us on the 2 important things—love for technology and ambition to take this club to a higher level. After this, we led the tenure with a common vision, trying to do our best for the club at every opportunity.
TLDR: Please don’t screw up your tenure! Also, Roboclub is best.