Let us look back at ROBOTIX 2011 from the point of view of a robotics aficionado with a fetish for out - of – the – box solutions to even the minimum of robot tasks. As we dug into our archives, we found a treasure trove of interesting robots that featured in this year’s edition of the fest. Without a lengthy preamble, lets head straight into technical glory!
RoboCop was designed to be an event that tested a bot’s ability to identify criminals from civilians . A bot actually shot marbles using a hydraulic mechanism based on air pressure at the “criminals”. In Pirate Bay, some robots had multiple arms for digging through sand and pebble. One even used a sweeping mechanism to traverse through sand! A stunning bot used multiple underwater propellers with Blue LEDs as illumination in R.A.F.T. Yet another used air propellers instead of water propellers.
The event “The Fugitives” broke new ground with teams of no less than two bots collaborating to corner stationary “fugitives” placed in a 10X10 grid. Wireless communication was used by several participating teams to run the team of bots. Ballista needed bots to detect a moving light source and shoot balls at it which was done with perfection by several teams.
Here are a few of the extraordinary designs which caught our (very observant) eye.
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