ROBOCON'09 

Team coordinator MNIT  Jaipur ROBOCON'09 team
( Decemeber'08 - March'09 )
No. of team members: 12 

Project Advisor: Dr. Rajesh Kumar, Dr. Himanshu Choudhary

Sponsor: MNIT Jaipur

Robocon'09 Theme video
Robocon  is an annual robotics event organised by Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union. The best team from the  participating countries compete at the host country. Our college team participated for the first time in the national round (India) of this event which was held at Pune during 7th-8th March, 2009. A total of 52 teams from all over India participated.

I led the college team and personally focused on the mechanical design and fabrication of the robots. For this event two autonomous and one manual robot was fabricated. Robot's palanquin lifting mechanism, turning mechanism were kept simple but effective to reduce the fabrication and operational difficulties.  The three videos shared on this page were captured during the testing phase.   

In Robocon autonomous testing video, functioning of the line following sensors is shown. Video also shows rotational mechanism of palanquin holder. Testing of robot at turns was also important to measure the swing of the palanquin which had to carry the third autonomous robot.

In Robocon manual testing video, motion of robot at an inclining and declining ramp has been captured. This ramp was part of the track on which three robots had to perform coordinated motion.

In Robocon carrier video, testing of the autonomous machine at ramp has been shown. This testing was done to know whether machine will deviate from intended path at inclining/declining surfaces. It was important to determine this deviation because autonomous robot had to lead the manual robot. 

While working with the team, I got the opportunity to enhance my knowledge of electronic circuit design and microcontroller programming involved in robotics. This work not only gave me hands on experience on designing and fabrication but I also gained valuable experience in efficiently integrating the work of different engineering streams to build the desired product.

Materials used: Aluminium (Frame), Nylon (Gears, Wheels), Composite (Bearing housing)
Microcontroller : PIC18F4685