…..Technovanza ‘08
CONCEPT
 Prototype of a 3-Dimensional motion crane to be
implemented on port for cargo handling of size
10’x10’x6’
 Crane used to load and unload cargo from ships to the
port
 Automation of crane using microcontrollers to follow
exact X,Y,Z coordinates entered
CONCEPT
 Prototype of automated railed carry truck to transport
containers from jetty to cargo hub based on separate
microcontroller
 Perfectly timed execution by communication between
microcontrollers
CHALLENGES
 Control motion of the huge crane
 Efficient algorithm to make the crane reach exact XYZ
co-ordinates
 Microcontroller interfacing with hardware
ATTEMPT
 It was the first attempt at VJTI to make working
prototypes in the technical festival
 It gave a lot of exposure to actual Mechatronics
 It was a great learning experience to mix the
programming with digital circuits and the Machine
 We learnt what does it mean by ‘burning midnight oil’
VJTI’s First Attempt
What is Robocon?
 The ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest or ABU
ROBOCON is an annual international project
organized by the ABU.
 Doordarshan Robocon India started in the year 2002
with four teams participating from reputed institutes.
Who can take Part?
 Engineering and Diploma Students are allowed to
participate in the competition. under standardized
rules, entrants test their creativity and technology in
an open competition.
 About 40 teams turned up at Robocon 2008, each
having paid an entry fees of Rs. 8000
Common Misconceptions
 Robocon is more about learning than about
competition and winning. We learnt a lot, not only in
the field of robotics but also about project
management and most importantly about team work.
 Robocon is not a festival. There are
 No Food Courts
 No array of Random Events
 No Informal Events
 No Song and Dance
 It isn’t a conference - there are no talks, no presentations
 No invited guests other than the judges and the sponsors
and at times a few political bigwigs.
So What is it?
 Robocon is a grueling 4-5 day period, and that
doesn’t include the 4 months before you get there.
 Very Little food whenever we get a chance to walk
to the place they give food.
 Very little sleep here and there in the pit area,
with a rather thin carpet/rug/whatever its called
separating you from the bare ground of one of
MIT's playground, a heated Soldering Iron 6
inches from your head, and someone using a
Power Drill about 3 feet away.
Why all the stress?
 In this time, teams from all the colleges work
round the clock reassembling, testing, and
retrofitting robots to add functionality and fine
tune their strategies, targeting individual teams
and adapting their game plan according to what
they think the opponent will do at each match.
Things break, and need to be fixed.
 Bugs show their ugly faces, accidents happen, and
tempers are usually on a very short fuse.
Why go through that much
tension?
 Robocon somehow pulls you back. Its been barely six
months since we’re back and we’re all enthusiastic to
go for the finals in Pune over the weekend.
 The most attractive thing is the amount of talent
under one roof, always gives something or the other to
learn.
VJTI at Robocon 2008
 Although it was VJTI’s first attempt, we pulled off
a fairly decent standing.
 In the preliminary rounds, we faced an uphill task
because of our autonomous machine giving us
unexpected problems, due to an array of reasons.
 However we managed faced all odds to beat one
team comprehensively, lost out narrowly to IIT
Madras on violations and lost against MIT, the
current India runners up.
OUR INSPIRATION
Driving in heavy traffic has become cumbersome in major
metros.
Autodrive is a way of mitigating this issue.
It is an attempt to improve safety, comfort and economy
through automation.
Its an innovative traffic solution system.
PROJECT INSIGHT
The auto-D feature comes into play in high traffic region where
the car usually shifts between the 1st and the 2nd gear, invoking
partial automation.
In this phase partial control of the car is shifted to an onboard
controller.
This involves automation of car control systems : brake, clutch,
accelerator and the gear box.
Sensors help incorporate Collision avoidance system and
autobraking override to improve safety
INTERFACING
Servo motors are calibrated to bring about proportional changes
in pedal angles via pulley arrangement.
Servos connected to fork system to control the gearbox.
Sensors mounted on front and rear of the car.
GEAR VIDEO
The avia is a venture into aerial surveillance:
A flying machine which is capable of hovering
and moving with 6 degrees of freedom as well
as go for long range surveillance with real
time video transfer.
Capabilities..
 The avia will be capable of vertical take-off
and landing with short distances.
 The wings will allow for efficient long distance
reconnaissance coupled with highly
maneuverable recon. For short distances.
 The avia will be able to detach the wings
during short range surveillance.
 Real time video transfer will form an integral
part of surveying.
Whats being done..
 The first prototype with hovering abilities is
ready with further developments being carried
out.
 The final bot will be a rotorcraft equipped with
a set of wings for power efficient, long
distance surveillance.
 The live video transfer will enable the pilot to
control the avia with ease as well as help in
transferring data on the go.
Whats been done…..
 Here are a few pics and video of the first prototype..
Whats next
 The machine is to be refined further and every
degree of freedom is to be achieved step by step.
 Real time video transfer is to be perfected.
 Stability of the craft is to be maintained at all times.
And finally..
 The avia is sure a promising beginning for
aeronautics in vjti..
 Micromouse is an autonomous self contained machine designed to get





to the centre of a maze in shortest possible time.
A Micromouse essentially comprises of a drive motor or motors to
move it.
a steering and turning method.
sensors to detect the presence or absence of maze walls.
sensors or control logic to oversee the action of the rest and keep the
vehicle 'on track' or to solve the maze.
batteries to provide power.
 The premise of the MicroMouse contest is simple: design
and build a small, autonomous robot that will find the
center of a maze.
 The mouse that makes it to the center of the maze is the
winner. If more than one mouse makes it, then the mouse
that gets there the fastest will be the winner.
 Contestants are given 10 to 15 minutes to solve the maze, so
many return to the start cell to make multiple runs. The
fastest of these runs becomes the official time.
 Championship-level mice can make it from the start cell to
the finish cell in well under 20 seconds with top speeds
averaging 2 meters/sec, now that's a fast mouse!
The maze
Micromouse at IIT TECHFEST
this is how its really done…!
 Other than the locations of the start and destination cells,
nothing else is known about the paths within the maze.
 The walls of the maze can be set up in any configuration by
the judges in charge of the contest. You will find that there
are always several solutions to the maze.
 This prevents robots from simply following the left or right
walls to solve the maze (try it in the example above, it
worn't work), and it makes the contest more interesting
since "smarter" mice will look for the quickest path.
 Computing Power
 Propulsion
 Sensors
 Chassis
 Batteries
 When your mouse can move about the maze reliably, it
must then be able to solve the maze. There are several
popular algorithms for doing this.
 The wall follower
 Depth Search First
 The Flood-Fill Algorithm
 The Modified Flood-Fill Algorithm
Whats all the noise about
• Arthros is a project which deals with the creation of robots
which make use of jointed appendages for locomotion.
• These include
•
•
•
•
Biped Humanoid Robots
Quadraped Robots
Hexapod Robots
Octapod Robots
…… the list goes on and on and on
Why even bother
 The very fact that 97% of the terrestrial population of
the world requires legs for locomotion makes it
imperative that robots master the skill of walking.
These mechanical arthropods would have to run, jump
and climb in the cities of our future
 Unlike conventional robots which use motors and
wheels for locomotion these bots explore a whole new
dimension in robotics
 Thus these bots help us and apply understand
concepts about balance and gait
 These bots are extensively used for unmanned
terrestrial exploration of treacherous terrains
 Examples of these include the Mars rover (we
obviously aren’t sending any of our bots to mars but
then again it doesn’t to hurt to imagine now does it!)
and bots used to explore active volcanoes.
Getting Down and Dirty
• We intend to work initially on making a manually
operated hexapod capable of moving over uneven
terrain and future prospects could be1. Making it completely autonomous .
2. Making it capable of recognizing its environment on
the basis of temperature, pressure sensors and image
processing.
Image Processing
 Nature is the best engineer
 Thus it’s the best source of inspiration for any
engineer!
 Sight is found in most complex living creatures.
 Eyesight is one of the most complex forms of sensory
organs.
What’s the big deal?
 At first glance, sight seems very easy
 Imagine being able to differentiate based on colour,
intensity, hue, saturation, shadows!
 Now imagine doing this in a matter of a few
microseconds, all the time!
 Needless to say the potential is really large, but the
complications mind boggling.
How can we do this on a
Computer?
 Camera = Eye
 The camera is a fairly good eye
 But we need something that figures out what the
camera is showing!
 So if you see someone you know on the screen, you
know its him, your PC just knows where to put the
pixels and the RGB values
Where is the Brain?
 To emulate the brain, we accept images and code in a
software called MATLAB
 MATLAB = MATrix LABoratories
 MATLAB is a fairly complex software having many
toolboxes, one of which is the Image Processing
Toolbox
 Anyone can learn MATLAB, and it is VERY useful for
engineering applications
 Image Processing using MATLAB can be used to
recognize colours and shapes.
Image Processing
Using Matlab
MATLAB Provides toolbox for,
 Image acquisition
 Image processing
 Many more…
 Many utility functions for fast image analysis
 Easy interface with any webcam or grabber card
 Excellent for initial experimentation
Image Processing (Contd.)
Colour detection
 Involves finding the pixel within certain range
 Absolute distance, Euclidean distance, etc.
 Choice of colour space is important
 Centroid detection
 Find the pixels comprising the object
 Find the average of X and Y co-ordinates
Cool, Lets Make the Terminator! Or Transformers
 Or we could keep things simple and just make a robot
that can follow a ball in a controlled environment
 With this, we can play Robosoccer, the intention of
this project
 We intend to combine some codes in MATLAB that
process images quick enough, along with a robot
which carries out a required algorithm.