Go back to your first Takneek. How many of you ended up short-circuiting your entire board? How many of you didn’t have ‘enough time’ to debug? Did you even know how to debug? How many could not get the components you needed? Could you complete your project?

The answers to these questions make it to the winner’s podium when you ask someone why they ‘left’ the SnT Council. My Takneek project had not worked. No one is to blame, but I chose to stick around. My reason was that my dad is a HAM radio hobbyist and a home brewer (HAM radio slang term for someone who builds gadgets at home). I wanted to know what my dad enjoyed so much.

I am Deepak Gangwar, a senior undergraduate student from Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur. The following blog contains my journey, interests and ambitions in Robotics and related technical fields besides the opportunities in these fields in IITK. There might be more blogs to come however probability of it happening is nearly negligible.

Today, I would like to share with you, my journey at IIT Kanpur so far. Perhaps along the way, you will end up finding something fascinating enough to pursue, or else you just might learn not to make the same mistakes. Either way, It will be a worthwhile endeavor. I don’t generally write blogs, so I am not very sure how to go about this one. I will just try to make it an interesting read, and highlight the 4 major decisions I made ( branch selection, Robocon-IGVC, Summer Internship, Placements). If you find any of them less interesting, just skip the corresponding section and there will be no loss of continuity.

While discussing robotics, sensors are major elements that can’t be ignored. They become important as they provide an interface to interact with the environment. That is why we have a whole range of sensors for different applications.

Most of my robotics experience came from my involvement in Team IGVC last year. Recruited as a member of Team Robocon, we shifted to IGVC in October due to conflicting competition dates of the former. You can read about IGVC and its objective on its official website www.igvc.org.

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.

The whitewashed room in Hall of Residence- II, equipped with big machines and conference tables, was designed a long time ago to cater to the needs of tinkering minds in the Institute. A lot of efforts by the students and alumni have gone into ensuring that this room, which belongs to the Robotics Club, would be a place where people would come together to explore new projects and test their ideas. Such is the motto of the Science and Technology Council as well, of which the club has been a part of its existence.

When you plan it right!

This blog post is about my experience while developing a C++ library for motion planning during my third year “internship”. This is about how after failing to secure an internship for summers, I try to rescue my self-confidence by taking up an ambitious summer project. Going in a direction orthogonal to what was planned and finally making something I am proud of. This is both, my experiences and a very short introduction to the library I developed.