India today’s First Humanoid ACYUT by Team BITS Pilani at RoboGames 2008 San Francisco California

June 18, 2008 - PRLog -- David Calkins who had worked with all types of robot competitions, realized the need for cross-pollination between events, as too many robot builders over-specialized within their own field. In 2004, David founded the RoboGames as RoboOlympics to bring together builders from combat robotics (mechanical engineering) along with soccer robotics (computer programming), sumo robotics (sensors), androids (motion control), and art robots (aesthetics) to exchange ideas and learn more. Additional details in (http://www.RoboGames.net)

By offering gold, silver and bronze medals, and inviting the best robot builders from countries other than just the US, RoboGames has given everyone a chance to excel and compete on a level playing field. Like the human Olympics, this event allows anyone to compete, not discriminating by race, nationality, age, education, gender, or even carbon-base...

The fifth edition of RoboGames involving 18 Countries, 58 Events, 176 Teams, 482 Entries, 504 Robots, and 563 Engineers was scheduled from Friday-Sunday, June 13-15, 2007 at Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, San Francisco California. The participating countries included USA, Korea, Austria, UK, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Taiwan, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, Denmark and India.

Samay Kohli, Arpit Mohan, Harsh Sinha, Prayag Mukherjee and Miss Sushma Vallabhaneni students from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani which is one among the top ranking universities in India today dared to dream, conceived, fabricated, tested and put India’s First Humanoid ACYUT (imperishable) in action. They were mentored by none other than Proud to be a BITSian and President of BITS Alumni Association (BITSAA) Dr R K Mittal Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Computer Science who is also presently the Dean for Academic Registration and Counselling at BITS Pilani. Dr Ravi Mittal has also authored a book titled Robotics and Control, ISBN 0070482934 ISBN-13 9780070482937 published by Tata McGraw-Hill.

The spark for the Humanoid project was lit when a delegate from Singapore demonstrated a humanoid at the International Conference on Emerging Mechanical Technology Macro to Nano held at BITS Pilani during 16 – 18 Feb 2007 (http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in:12371/). After the conference a group of BITS students asked Dr Mittal Can We and Dr Mittal said Yes We can and We Will and the Race for Humanoid capable of performing a plethora of functions such as walking, climbing stairs, playing football, etc. started.

The alumni batch of 76-81 from BITS Pilani who celebrated their Silver Jubilee Reunion at Pilani during October 2006 got excited by the ACYUT Humanoid Project and stepped in to support the efforts morally, technically and financially and then on it became a Mission with Passion to reach the RoboGames 2008.

One of the alumnus of the Institute Viggy Mokkarala Executive Vice President, Envestnet Asset Management Inc on finding a girl in the ACYUT mission remarked “I, for one, and as a father of a 17 year old girl, will go out of my way to encourage a BITS woman engineer to go the extra distance and go for something like this project.” In fact enrollment of girls for higher education at BITS is itself a revealing statistics which is Neighbour’s Envy Owners Pride.

Subodh Karnik who needs no introduction arranged for free air tickets for the team’s travel. Sierra Atlantic Raju Reddy arranged for corporate funding and taking care of a good portion of the team's stay in the bay area, transportation, food, etc. Other BITSians like Arun Lakhotia have sponsored the team trip to Louisiana University (travel, accomodation and food/logistics) and Nasir has arranged for the students' stay in the New York area.

BITS-Pilani Alumni Association (BITSAA SVC Chapter) and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) planned for co-hosting the reception on June 17, 2008 at TiE Silicon Valley Office, Santa Clara , CA for the Humanoid where the students from BITS Pilani would display ACYUT and its prowess on the soccer field and the dance floor! The reception also included a panel discussion on the emerging cross border collaboration between leading universities and businesses in India and the US with the participation of Prof. Krishna Saraswat (BITS-Pilani '68), Professor, School of Engineering Stanford University and Patrick Kane, University Alliance Director, Cypress Semiconductor Corp.

Now that ACYUT the first humanoid from India has made its presence at Robogames 2008, India’s entry into the Humanoid Race spear headed by BITS Pilani and its passion packed alumni across the globe has truly started.

About BITSAA: One among the top ranking universities in India today, Birla Institute of Technology and Science - BITS Pilani which has the reputation of pioneering the online examinations for admissions through the path breaking BITSAT and setting a benchmark in industry university collaborations offers degrees in various disciplines presently at Pilani, Dubai, Goa campuses and in the short future at Hyderabad campus apart from an array of work integrated learning programmes for HRD of a vast spectrum of Indian corporates. BITSAA is the alumni associtaion of the Institute whose alumni are spread across the globe from Australia to America.

# # #

Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani Rajasthan is a Deemed University (established under section 3 of the UGC Act. 1956 under notification no. F.12-23/63.U-2 dated 18th June, 1964) running educational programmes both on-campus as well as off-campus, offering degrees at all three-tiers, namely, Integrated First Degree, Higher Degree and PhD.

Website: www.bits-pilani.ac.in