By Azera Rahman
New Delhi, Feb 14 (IANS) Two students from the premier engineering institute BITS at Pilani have developed for the first time in India a humanoid robot that will be shown at the world’s biggest robot contest in San Francisco.
Samay Kohli, 21, and Arpit Mohan, 19, are all set to leave for the US despite funding problems.
“Although non-resident Indians (NRI) have developed humanoids before, we are the first Indians here to have developed one,” Kohli beamed.
“To be more specific, we have developed a biped in which we have perfected the gait movement of the robot so that it resembles a human being very closely,” Kohli told IANS.
A team of four students, including Harsh Sinha and Prayag Mukherjee, besides Kohli and Mohan, has developed a 50-cm tall prototype of the humanoid robot, a robot they are taking to the RoboGames.
“RoboGames, as is featured in the Guinness book, is the biggest open robot competition in the world and we will be the first Indian team to participate in the humanoid section,” Mohan said.
The biped which Kohli and his team has created can self-balance itself, climb stairs 20 percent of its height, has a high walking speed and very flexible legs which can move on seven different axis.
Winning the competition was, however, not the aim when the students got down to making the model six months ago.
“What we are more interested in is the research part of it. The competition is in June and we hope to complete the final model by May.
“If we win, there are several non-Indian companies that have shown interest in funding our research. We will then apply for a patent,” Kohli said.
Funding at this stage, which is crucial for the team to take part in the contest at the first place, is turning out to be a major challenge.
“The BITS alumni association has sponsored Rs.500,000 and all others we approached have agreed to sponsor our travel. But we need Rs.300,000-400,000 more for the model because most of its components are not available here and have to be brought from the US.
“We are yet to receive any kind of help from the government unlike in the US where the government pushes research for technology. We did approach the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) but they are interested more in technology that will help defence,” Kohli said.
But the team is still hopeful.
“In the next few months we will take the biped to the various festivals at engineering institutes, including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), and ask experts there for any advice to improvise our model.
“If nothing works out on the funding front, we will look at the option of self-funding. We have spent a lot of time in this project unlike other competitors who just spend a month or two and we really want to carry on with this research,” the duo said enthusiastically.
(Azera Rahman can be contacted at [email protected])