Matching with the theme of this year i.e. ‘Urban Agriculture’, the entry made by IIT Bombay at e-YRC 2013( e-Yantra Robotics Competition 2013) was Robots that can sow seeds in a farm, robots that can remove weeds, robots used for fertilizing crops and robots that can even pluck fruits from trees and accumulate these at one place.
More than 6,000 students had registered for e-YRC 2013 from across the country with several of them from institutions in smaller towns and remote corners of the country like Dhanbad, Jharkhand; Yamuna Nagar, Haryana; Sangli, Maharashtra; Jadopur, Kolkata, Rourkela, Orissa and Nadiad in Gujarat to mention some.
Agriculture is a major industry in India contributing to over 15% of GDP and employing 50% of the workforce. India has been self-sufficient in food production for more than a decade – however there are problems faced at every stage of food production, which lead to insufficient produce as well as wastage of food grains.
The aim of the competition was to bring awareness to students about many problems that a farmer faces and how technology may be used to provide solutions to these problems. In the process of creating these prototypes, students learn concepts of Embedded systems, micro-controller programming and hone their communication skills as well.
The top teams under the category of Seed Sowing Robot were from-
- Walchand College of Engineering, Sangle;
- K J Somaiya College of Engineering, Mumbai;
- BITS Pilani, Goa (not necessarily in the order of 1st, 2nd, 3rd).
- Dharmsinh Desai University, Nadiad
- R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore.
- K J Somaiya College of Engineering, Mumbai;
- Dr. D Y Patil College of Engineering, Pune;
- Jawaharlal Nehru National College of Engineering, Shimoga.
A Senior Program Manager Dr. Saraswathi Kirthivasan, demonstrated the importance of the program by saying “The e-Yantra Robotics Competition provides a platform for students to demonstrate their knowledge and programming skills in embedded system and Robotics to solve real life problems with the given hardware.”
This competition is different from other such competitions as it doesn’t demands students to make robot from scratch instead a robot kit is beforehand provided to the students complete with accessories, to build an application based on the theme assigned to them.
This model has been a hit with students from engineering colleges as (i) this model makes the Robots accessible to even students from the remotest of regions (ii) students are helped to implement the project in a step-by-step manner in a Project Based Learning (PBL) mode, and (iii) it identifies talent across the country whereby students are encouraged to think innovatively to solve problems from their daily life.
Source:TOI
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