OCTOBER 10: The disparate worlds of artificial intelligence and sumo wrestling got into a tight clinch at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campus at Powai on Sunday. In a mingling of brain and brawn, robots `wrestled' with one another at `Yantriki', an intercollegiate robotics competition organised by the mechanical engineering department of IIT Mumbai.The robots have been created by engineering students from over 20 colleges in the country to participate in Yantriki, which was conceived in 1994 to develop innovative skills among students in developing products. Around 50 robots were seen in action at the techfest, which also included a workshop on robotics, a science exhibition of industrial robots and product designs such as plastic combs to build steering units, sewing machine bobbins for pulleys and photo sensors from bugler alarms. Just like in sumo wrestling, the robots grappled with their rivals to come out tops in the two-day competition, which ended on Sunday. The robots sure had fancynames like `Samurai', `Ultimate Warrior', `No Mercy', `Terminator' and `Juggernaut', but they didn't look like the real thing.``Each robot has to weigh less than two kilograms and can use electrical motors of less than 12 volts only. Going by these conditions, none of the robots actually look like heavy-duty sumo androids and more or less resemble a car or a crane in order to push and throw opponents out of the ring,'' explained N Jayendra, a final year IIT student whose `Dixie Dynamites' robot won the Yantriki trophy last year for shooting the maximum number of carrom coins.Participant Arunabh Chaudhary of Regional Engineering College, Nagpur, whose entry was `Ultimate Warrior', said, ``I and three other friends designed this robot using a 12-volt car wiper motor with an extremely high torque. To minimise costs, students use spare parts from toys, electric razors and other small gadgets to make the robots that can be remote controlled to go back and forth, rotate sideways or even climb upon the rivalrobot.''Added Sameera P, a third year IIT student, who was one of the few female participants at Yantriki, ``My creation Samurai is a four-wheel drive which took around four weeks to design.'' Though she was not confident of winning, she said she was `happy to participate.'``The students are really excited about this concept. The thrill of building a robot and making it fight other robots in a sumo wrestling match is very engaging and inviting for budding engineers,'' observed Saurabh Jhawar, one of the organisers and a third-year mechanical engineering student of IIT.Yantriki started small in 1994. ``Earlier concepts included robots playing tug-of-war, basketball and carrom. There has been improvement over the years,'' said Professor C Amarnath of the mechanical engineering department, the brain behind Yantriki.The three winners in different categories today were: `Angad', designed by Rajesh Vats and members of IIT-Bombay, `No Mercy' by Aditya Mittal also of IIT-Bombay and `Dominator', by AnantMalewar of VCTE Engineering College, Mumbai. As Navjot Marwaha put it, ``An ideal robot warrior should be able to dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Of course, it will take some years to actually design such a machine to take on Mohammed Ali!''
