Robotix is an annual robotics

Robotics

Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...

 and programming event, organised by the Technology Robotix Society, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur

The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur is an autonomous engineering, technology and management oriented institute of higher education established by the government of India in 1951...

. Robotix is organised during Kshitij

Kshitij

Kshitij is the annual techno-management fest of the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India. Kshitij started off in 2004 with the aim of promoting technology and entrepreneurship in India, and in 8 years, it has grown to become the Asia’s largest techno-management fest. The...

, the annual techno-management festival of the institute. Participation is open to any college student. The event gives the contestants an opportunity to showcase their talent in the fields of mechanical robotics, autonomous robotics and programming.

History

Robotix started off in the year 2001, under IDEON, the old name of Kshitij. It was the brainchild of Kunal Sinha, Saurabh Prasad and Varun Rai (class of 2002, IIT Kharagpur). It started as an in-house event for the students of IIT Kharagpur. 8 teams turned up in the inaugural year. IDEON became Kshitij in 2003. Currently, Robotix is organised under the umbrella of Kshitij. The participation has increased over the years, with 220 teams turning up for Robotix 2006, 546 teams for Robotix 2007, over 1000 teams for Robotix 2008, and Robotix 2009 managing to better all its predecessors. Robotix celebrated its ten years in 2010 with an array of the most challenging problem statements ever. Robotix 2011 for the first time conducted an event on the water surface, R.A.F.T. in which over 250 teams participated. The difficulty level was arguably the best this country has seen till date. The quality of participation too, was at its best ever.

Events

The events pit participants' robots against each other in an arena. Events are either of solo-run type or one-on-one type. In a solo-run event, the bot is given free run in the arena, and then evaluated on various marking criteria like time taken, task completed and efficiency etc.

In a one-on-one event(usually employed in knockout rounds), two or more teams fight against each other. There is a direct competition between the two teams and only one team makes it through to the next round.

Events during Robotix are conducted under three categories — mechanical, autonomous and programming(usually online).

Manual events

In a manual event, the robot is manually controlled by the participant with the help of a remote control. The remote system may be either wired or unwired. The robot then has to perform the specified task. The event may be held as a solo run type or a one-on-one type.

Autonomous events

In autonomous events, robots are independent and participants are not allowed to control them in any way during their run. These robots usually use programmed micro controllers that lend the robots all their decision making powers. Here too, the event maybe solo-run or one-on-one type.

Programming events

Participants are required to write program codes in these events in order to solve the problem that has been posed. Usually, online participation is allowed in programming events.
For more detailed information regarding our previous years' events check out Robotix Archives.

Manual Events

Inferno

The objective of the event is to build a robot which can play the role of a fireman by dousing fires and saving people(cylinders) from a burning building! This is going to be a first of its kind event in the history of the fest.

Vertigo

The task for the robot is to 'zip' across a zipline and shoot at targets directly below it. This event challenges you to take the risk and innovate despite the fear of heights, vertigo.

Autonomous Events

Stasis

This autonomous event is something never attempted before in India! The task is to balance a compartmentalized water reservoir and guide it through a variety of terrains.

Stalker

This event involves building two autonomous robots that can communicate, such that one guides the other. The first bot is supposed to traverse a line, and communicate in such a fashion with the second bot that, the second bot too traces a similar path, on another arena (without any markings; will have certain checkpoints).

Nuke Clear

The objective is to build a fully autonomous image processing robot capable of navigating itself in an arena, detecting bombs and diffusing them.

Online Event

Echelon

The idea is to make a machine capable of ‘understanding’ our world, and the following problem statement aims at putting together basic NLP (natural language programming) tasks towards a useful end.

Manual Events

R.A.F.T.

The task was to build a manually controlled robot or a group of robots which can navigate a raft on water and retrieve people (in our case, balls) from flood affected areas (platforms) and bring them to safety(Victory zone).

Pirate Bay

The event's challenge was to design a manually controlled robot that is capable of handling far more variables than a regular terrestrial bot. The pirate-bot is required to dig out buried treasure and rescue fellow pirates.

Autonomous Events

The Fugitives

A very innovative and challenging event, that required participants to build at most four autonomous robots that may communicate and collaborate to detect and corner fugitive bots!

Ballista

The task was to build an autonomous robot that could shoot ping-pong balls into a basket from different locations. The bot with better accuracy and range won.

Robocop

An Image-Processing based event that required the robot to have an on-board image processing system to identify and knock-out statuettes of a certain colour.

Online Event

The Negotiators

The objective was to submit a computer program online, that could negotiate with opponents in order to complete a configuration of blocks on a virtual arena.

Robotix 2010

The tenth edition of Robotix was held between 28 January and 31 January, 2010. An X figured in all event names to mark ten fabulous years of Robotix.
The following events were held-

Autonomous events

Xplode

An event inspired by the landmine problem that plagues several African countries today. For the event, participants were required to build two autonomous robots: a mine-detecting bot and a mine-avoiding bot. The mine-detecting bot, after mapping the entire arena transmits information regarding the location of the mines to the mine-avoiding bot. The mine-avoiding bot then traverses the whole arena in the shortest time avoiding all the mines in its path.

Xtension

Xtension essentially required the participants to make robots capable of co-ordinating amongst themselves and traversing across a series of chasms. There was no restiction on the number of bots one could build, the only condition being that at least one robot be autonomous.

8MileX

After the pleasant success of 8Mile in Robotix'09, team Robotix continued with India's only outdoor autonomous event and the ultimate image processing problem statement. A scaled down version of the famous Darpa Challenge, 8Milex required participants to build autonomous vehicles capable of travelling on an actual road and obeying traffic rules.

Manual events

TribotX Championship

It was a three-tier tournament that required participants to undertake 3 tasks over 3 days of the fest. Teams with the highest cummulative score after the first two tasks could make it to the final knock-out stage of the competition. The only information available prior to the event was a list of modules that participants might have had to use during their run. The actual problem statement was released only 12 hours before each task commenced.

eXplore

In this under-water event, participants were required to build robots capable of releasing several light-weight balls held at different co-oridnates in a large water tank. Once this was done, the bots had to collect the balls floating on the surface and bring them to a designated area of the arena, called the victory zone. Teams were free to choose any mechanism and design to counter this difficult environment.

Online/Programming events

Xants

Xants drew its theme from the highly organised functioning of an ant-hill and aimed to incorporate the principles of swarm logic and collective intelligence. In a simulated set-up consisting of an ant colony and several energy packets distributed across the arena, where individual ants cannot sense beyond a certain range and can only leave a scent trail for other ants to follow, participants had to design an algorithm to optimise this co-ordination and procure the energy packets efficiently.

Robotix 2009

Robotix 2009 was held between 29 January and 1 February, 2009.
The following events were held-

Autonomous events

8 Mile

For the first time in India, an outdoor robotics event was held. The participant had to build a completely autonomous vehicle(battery powered) which could traverse the road, and follow simple traffic rules like Stopping at a Zebra Crossing, following Traffic Light, etc.

12 Doors Down

The Autonomous Bot is lost in a labyrinth of cells, the participant with the help of a manual bot had to guide it out of the grid, by the mechanism of an opening and closing the door. The lost bot had to be completely Autonomous.

Programming - online events

MicroMouse4D

The classic robotics problem of micro-mouse

Micromouse

Micromouse is an event where small robot mice solve a 16x16 maze. It began in late 1970s, although there is some indication of events in 1950. Events are held worldwide, and are most popular in the UK, U.S., Japan, Singapore, India and South Korea....

 was simulated in Microsoft Robotics Studio

Microsoft Robotics Studio

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is a Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation. It is aimed at academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers and handles a wide variety of robot hardware....

 for everyone's convenience. With no hardware problems, the participant had to just code a function in a pre-programmed template for the simulation to run.

framED9211

An Online Image Processing

Image processing

In electrical engineering and computer science, image processing is any form of signal processing for which the input is an image, such as a photograph or video frame; the output of image processing may be either an image or, a set of characteristics or parameters related to the image...

 Event, that required participants to submit a code( in a language of their choice!) which could recognize the Number Plate of a fast moving car, among all the moving cars in a real life video.

Manual events

wEDGED

In real life Nintendo world, the task was to climb a wooden wedge while avoiding the swinging pendula, grabbing a plank by its handle and swinging on to a lower platform. It was a One-on-One competition.

"#mEsh"

This event required participants to build a Robot that could climb up and down an inclined metallic mesh, the size of a unit square of mesh being 7cm x 7cm.

Robo-Relay

Autonomous Events

I.M.A.G.E.

A computer controlled autonomous robot, with the help of a maximum of two cameras (second being optional) , should be able to navigate the arena avoiding the obstacles and passing through various checkpoints before finally reaching the end point.

Robo-Relay

Two fully autonomous robots should be able to traverse an irregular track with a baton. The bots should be synchronized so as to run one after another, after the passing of a baton supplied.

On Spot Robotics(Autonomous)

This was an undisclosed event where the task was making an autonomous robot, most significantly its circuit using logic gates only. Use of microcontrollers is not allowed.

Manual Events

Stackistics

The task of the robot(s) is to assemble blocks of various pre-specified shapes and dimensions to arrange them to form a given spatial structure.

Terra Ranger

A mechanically controlled robot capable of traveling on varied surfaces. The arena will require the bot to move around different land forms and terrains, including water surfaces.

On Spot Robotics(Manual)

This was an undisclosed event where the task was making a simple manually controlled robot along with its controller designed to fulfill the requirement of the problem statement.

Online Event

Mission Mars

The task is to code robot ants which can coordinate among themselves during their mission and to help them probe as much area of the planet as possible.

Robotix 2007

Robotix 2007 was held between 1 February and 4 February, 2007. The following six events were held-

Autonomous events

Rail Track Inspector

In Rail Track Inspector, the participants were required to build a robot that could follow two parallel white lines, 5 cm

Centimetre

A centimetre is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one hundredth of a metre, which is the SI base unit of length. Centi is the SI prefix for a factor of . Hence a centimetre can be written as or — meaning or respectively...

 apart, on a black background and report errors, if any, as and when they occurred. The errors were of two types:

• The distance between the white lines differed from their specified :gap.
• One of the white lines became discontinuous.

The robot was required to identify both the errors separately.

Grid Navigator

Grid Navigator, required participants to build autonomous robots that could move in a 8x8 square maze and detect the position of obstacles placed in the maze without dislocating it. The maze was in the form of a two dimensional numbered grid. Squares were marked with white lines on a black background. The robot had to start from one end of the maze and reach the diagonally opposite end after identifying all the obstacles. The robot was free to roam in the grid in any given way.

Programming - online events

Mission Mars

Mission Mars required the participants to write codes to control robot ants on a simulated Martian surface, such that it could cover the maximum area in a given time. Multiple instances of the same program were run at the same time, each being able to communicate with the other to prevent any collision, which rendered both the robots extinct. The competition gave its participants the liberty to code in either C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

 or C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

 or Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

.

Jigsaw

In Jigsaw, the participants were required to write a code that could solve a jumbled up picture. The picture was broken up into fragments and jumbled up using a program itself. As per the rules mentioned on the official website, the top left corner of the jumbled picture was the same as the original picture. Here, the participants were allowed to code either in C or C++.

Manual events

Load runner

Load runner required participants to build a manually controlled robot that had a hooking mechanism so that it could hook up to freights and link them together to form a train. It then had to form the engine of the same train and pull it to its destination. Use of magnetic material to attach to the freights was prohibited.

Step climber

In this event, participants were required to build a manually controlled robot that could climb up and down a flight of stairs. The height of the steps varied up and down the stairs.

Robotix 2006

Robotix 2006 was held between 2 February and 5 February, 2006. The following five events were held-

Autonomous events

Distance Tracker

In this event participant had to build a fully autonomous machine that would not only know exactly the distance that it has traversed, but would also flash it in digital format; paths ranged from a simple circle to an arbitrary route.

Match Maker

This event required participants to prepare a computer controlled robot that would move the white blocks placed in the arena to regions of their corresponding shape.

Programming - online events

Mission Mars

In this online programming event participants had to code their robot ants to cover as much area of the Martian surface, given time is a constraint.

Manual events

Top-sy Turvy

Top-sy Turvy required participants to make bots which could pick the balls kept at different altitudes and on different surfaces and throw them in a goal-post within a stipulated amount of time.

Water Polo

This event was a race on water surface. The machine made by the participants had to put five balls inside a certain goalpost (net) in the least time possible.

External links

• Official Website of Robotix
• Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
• Kshitij Website