He would be the envy of any golf pro. Standing six feet tall, he hits the ball right into the hole at a success rate of 97 per cent. What’s more, he repeats the feat almost as many time as he’s asked to. And the only reason he is not giving Tiger Woods a complex is that he’s a robot.Playing the popular sport with utmost accuracy and panache is the Golf Robot designed by Pune-based Precision Automation and Robotics India (PARI).It was this invention that caught the fancy of the crowd during the Auto Expo exhibition held at Pragati Maidan in Delhi earlier this month. The only Golf Robot in the country, it was designed by a team of engineers at PARI three years back and works on the principle of three-axis servo-operated robot. “It has movements like that of our arm. The whole system is computerised and the robot re-hits the ball periodically, you can set the time gap though,” explains Dale Anil Vallabhdas, the design head at the company.The idea to design a golf robot, however, came from Ranjit Date, the joint managing director of the company, who himself is an ardent golf player. “Golf is a game where a small ball has to precisely go into a small hole which isn’t as easy as it may seem. The aim must be excellent so we thought this would be the most popular sport to show accuracy through automation.”Three years ago, when three engineering students from the Sinhagad College of Engineering came for their final-year project, four design engineers from PARI teamed up with them to prepare the project. Deepak Dhavalikar, C V Sridhar and Vallabhdas along with students, Ravi Karmarkar, Veeshvesh Katakkar and Ashutosh Katre took four months to design, manufacture, integrate and finally try the project.“The whole project was so complicated that we had to import elements like the gear box from Japan. There was a lot of pressure to select the right kind of systems,” says Sridhar, who was heading the team then.The model is now being used for referral studies as a classic example of precision. “We have included quite a few techniques in it, through it we have set parameters of accuracy and precision,” adds Sridhar.According to the auto expo industry estimates, at present the growth in the manufacturing of robots is much faster in India than any other country including Japan. PARI, however, is the only automation and robotic solution provider company to different industries in India and other countries like the USA, Canada and France.
