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.