Kerala - Kozhikode   

Robots steal the show at ‘Tathva’

Photo: S. Ramesh Kurup

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A roboticist from IIT, Bombay, exhibiting different kinds of robots at Tathva, technical festival of NIT-C, in Kozhikode on Friday. —

Kozhikode: Sachitanand S. Malewar and Behlul Sutarawala of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) showcased ‘Thunderbird 8051 microcontroller,’ a robot which can be controlled by an ordinary TV remote.

It was the robotics exhibition organised as part of ‘Tathva,’ the annual technical festival, currently on at the National Institute of Technology, Calicut (NIT-C).

‘Thunderbird’ is equipped with a sensor that can measure the distance it travels. The ‘Firewall’ series of robots is also on display. “I am a regular viewer of cartoons. So these robots have been named after cartoon characters,” says Mr. Sachitanand.

Mr. Sachitanand, a Research Fellow at the Embedded Real-time Systems Lab at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT, along with a couple of others co-founded Nex Robotics. It was founded in the summer of 2006 by the faculty and students of IIT-B.

Around 400 participants contested in the ‘Gaming Arena’ where the computer game contest on Friday was ‘counter strike.’ The Architecture Department of the NIT-C has displayed the sketches and plans made by students over the years. Detailed plans and sketches of Palayoor Church is one among them.

‘MyFirm,’ a one-day simulation game that dealt with the ‘management of the firm by the entrepreneur’ conducted by Vinod Dumblekar of MANTIS, was held earlier in the day.

One of the more challenging events was ‘B-aptist,’ where aspiring entrepreneurs had to present their business propositions before a panel of judges.

‘ChallengeX,’ which drew the maximum number of contestants, tested the participants’ skills in Linux.

Union Ministry of Human Resources Additional Secretary Acharya, who visited the campus during the day emphasised the need for integrating all the NITs. Project Runway, the aero modelling competition, was also a crowd puller.

The Musical Fountain designing competition, Bellagio, was spectacular as aesthetics went hand in hand with technology. Competition was extremely tight in ‘Rhapsodic Rectifier,’ where the contestants had to debug a familiar circuit and make it work in the shortest possible time.

The highlight of the day was a video conferencing session with the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. He very enthusiastically interacted with the crowd of students who posed their queries to him.

The following were the first, second and third prize winners respectively of the contests held on Friday.

Enquire School Quiz: Jithin R and Arjun R. Shankar of Kendriya Vidyalaya number 1; Sachin R. Das, and Joel Oomen Muzhangody of Auxilium Navajyothi School and Mohammed Ameen and Mithun P. Devarva of Silver Hills HSS.

Blueprint ECED Results: Dinesh Singh J. and Natarajan R. of Sri Sairam Engineering College; S. Abhilash of NIT-C and Sreesan V of BITS, Pilani.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

BSNL to conduct open house
Robots steal the show at ‘Tathva’
Training in rubber tapping
Youth camp in Delhi and Rajasthan
Rice distribution
Selected for award
Elamaram visits Chaliyam to assess damage
Medical camp
Kozhikode Today

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu