IIT Techfest 2011: The Robots Cometh
08 Jan, 2011, 12:30 pm IST | by Ashish Koshy
IIT Techfest was in full swing with robotics taking center stage.
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While CES 2011 is in full swing on the other side of the Pond with Tablets taking centre stage, young inventors got together for their yearly meet up in Powai at the annual IIT Techfest. The Techfest runs for three whole days from the 7th to the 9th of January and includes quite a bit of innovation to keep any tech enthusiast on the edge of their seat. We headed on down to the campus to see just what kind of technology these kids had to show off this year. Here’s a closer look. The event was divided into different sections for exhibitions, competitions and lectures by different professors. The exhibitions are what caught our attention immediately as they featured some awesome robots and a couple of other technologies that seemed really impressive. DARWIN First up was DARWIN, no relation to Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologist, but more of a dancing robot. It was India’s entry into a robot competition held sometime back in Malaysia, in which DARWIN won the “Best Technical” award for the way it performed. These 15-year old kids have a passion for robots and in a matter of a mere six months, put this together. Do the Robot... Bhangra Style DARWIN is controlled by remote control using modified Nintendo Wii Nunchucks as the controllers. He’s hooked up this system via Bluetooth to communicate between the various components. The components themselves are Bluetooth-enabled Lego Mindstorm parts. Isn’t Lego just the best building material? These kids are on their way to engineering stardom if they keep this up but naming a robot dressed up like a Punjabi dancer DARWIN is just weird. Nevertheless, good job guys! The CK Bot Centipede Coming to the next stall, we saw a large robot centipede moving around frantically. The centipede is made of multiple CK Bots which are actually individual robots. This one isn't creepy or crawley Some kids from the University of Philadelphia are responsible for the CK Bots. They designed them in the shape of small cubes that could be used together in tandem to perform a variety of tasks. The main CK Bot only consists of a moving part and a small processor. What makes it amazing is that you can use the same bot for a variety of purposes - for instance, this centipede can be re-assembled to act like a small lever. So, you don't have to make two separate robots, just re-use the components.
Drums for Da Vinci Check out the video of the Drum bot beating out some tunes. |
Tags: IIT Techfest 2011 , Robots , Robotics , Darwin , PR-2 Robot
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