IIT Mumbai Techfest RoboWar

Like the gladiatorial arenas in ancient Rome when man was pitted against man in a fight to the finish, a spectacle watched with bated breath by citizens seated in the amphitheater in their thousands, so is the spectacle at the SOM Well in the sprawling IIT Bombay campus in Powai year on year when for three days, through successive eliminations of the weak and the ungainly, robots progress through several rounds to vie for the honour of the last robot standing at the conclusion of the Robowars. The IIT - Bombay, Science and Technology Festival, concluded last Sunday, with thousands of visitors and participants from across India queuing up at the entrance to the IIT Mumbai campus in Powai over three days. Event and visitor registrations ran full through the morning hours. The first IIT - Mumbai Techfest kicked off in 1998, drawing only a few thousands. This year the annual event marked its thirteenth straight edition. Over 60,000 participants and visitors were estimated to have walked through the gates last year. I expect the numbers to have swollen by a fair bit last week. The organizers, students of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, claim the three day event to be the largest of its kind in Asia, and if the numbers of visitors and participants streaming in was any indication then it might well be the case. The fight moderator rose from his seat and called on teams to stack the wires into a single unit and insulate it well to withstand the wear. "If necessary, use PVC pipes as protection," he advised. The robots are powered electrically, and the use of IC engine is forbidden. I watched a robot awaiting its turn in the fighting square, its cylinders primed for action. I assumed some of the robots would attempt to punch their opponent with their pneumatic-driven arms, a ploy I thought would not be as effective as the use of flippers to lift the opponent and render it hors de combat while time ticks away. A robot wins if it can immobilize its opponent for thirty seconds while preventing any linear movement to less than an inch. Others settled around open circuits, oblivious to the heat of the mid-day Sun while they grappled with last minute issues, worrying over their machines. Many have traveled over long distances to participate in theTechfest, carrying along machines they've fashioned back home, hoping to win. Even so, to know they've competed well will go a long way in helping them believe in their own ability. It is a springboard that education seeks to achieve. The rest as they say is up to destiny. The fight moderator rose from his seat and called on teams to stack the wires into a single unit and insulate it well to withstand the wear. "If necessary, use PVC pipes as protection," he advised. The robots are powered electrically, and the use of IC engine is forbidden. I watched a robot awaiting its turn in the fighting square, its cylinders primed for action. I assumed some of the robots would attempt to punch their opponent with their pneumatic-driven arms, a ploy I thought would not be as effective as the use of flippers to lift the opponent and render it hors de combat while time ticks away. A robot wins if it can immobilize its opponent for thirty seconds while preventing any linear movement to less than an inch. What follows next is attempted mayhem as weapons are unsheathed to loud clangs, their movement controlled by teams outside the enclosure, excited, nervous, and tense in equal measure. The crowd watches every move, cheering their favourites on as cameras flash. Even as the SOM Well ebbs and falls to the raucous cheers of the audience watching Robowars, in the pavilion located on the approach to the SOM Well, robots of another kind are engaged in showing off their skills and combating one another in CROSS_OVER. Here, students are crowded along a perimeter watching participants snap bridges open in an open Arena and have a remotely controlled robot drive over it and negotiate the Arena. The challenge is to create a "manually controlled machine which crosses a pit and competes against another robot in a one on one knockout event."

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