Media Release
Udupi, Feb 27: Dr H S Ballal, pro chancellor, Manipal University unveiled the robots designed by RoboManipal the student robotics team of Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal at MIT here on Friday. The team will take part in the National Robocon ’16 India to be held in Pune from March 3 to 5. The team comprises of 33 members including five girls from different branches of engineering.
Team leader Satish Reddy said he hopes the team will qualify for the big international event to be held in Bangkok later this year. “Abu Robocon is the biggest robotics competition in Asia Pacific region and we are confident of making it to the competition in Thailand. We have been working on the robots for the last six months and six months prior to that we all studied a lot on robots. It has been a wonderful team effort and we have all worked tirelessly and selflessly.”
Soon after the unveiling, the team gave a flawless demonstration of how robots worked and also explained the mechanism to the large gathering of students and faculty. Director MIT, Dr G K Prabhu congratulated the students for designing the robots to take part in the competitions. He assured the students of full support in their efforts and also encouraged them to take up many such projects.
This year’s Robocon Theme is 'Clean Energy Recharging the World', proposed by Thailand. The problem statement involves two robots, a manually controlled ‘Hybrid Robot’ that powers an autonomous ‘Eco Robot’ as it traverses the arena. The ‘Eco Robot’ has no on-board power to drive itself and is powered wirelessly by the ‘Hybrid Robot'.
RoboManipal has had a number of successful performances to its credit over the last few years. It has come a long way since its inception, integrating innovative solutions to complex problems. The team also has alumni who have participated in the 4th international NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition in 2013. Fracktal Works, a 3D printing start-up venture that had humble beginnings at the MIT workshop, is performing well today and is now leading the 3D printing industry in India.