The ARC

Automation and Robotics Club, or the ARC, is the go-to place for a robotics enthusiast. From line following to bomb squad, right from the basics to the advanced – ARC does everything you dreamt of doing with robots. Though the core team of ARC might be small with around thirty-five members, their events invoke huge participation in the campus. Their 2017 line follower workshop, on 23rd September, drew a participation in excess of 74 teams (210+ people). The next ARC workshop that has been planned is a Bomb Squad workshop, as a precursor to the ATMOS event. The ARC began as a small group of around nine tech-geeks in 2014 with no funding, no room to make stuff, and almost no materials at the beginning. They could get a temporary workspace in E123 with the help of Prof. YVD Rao of the Mechanical Engineering Department. They started making stuff, beginning with the Smart Inventory Management System (SIMS) to keep track of materials, and drones.

Today, their work includes a Drawing Robot, a Scara Robotic Arm, and three 3D printers, of which the Flash Forge Inventor is the best. The Flash Forge Inventor was purchased after the current Secretary, Yohan MMR, got a research grant from the DST, Govt. of India. The ARC also gets grants from the Director’s Discretionary Fund. The ARC also has a futuristic robotic arm that can imitate (or “shadow”) the movement of our hand. The robot can play Tic-Tac-Toe with humans, and can even detect what we played. Another work in progress for the ARC is the chess bot, that was inspired by Wizards’ Chess of Harry Potter. The chess bot, which runs on an AI built by the members of this club, has strong magnets placed underneath the chess board, which can drag the metallic pieces along with them when the robot is making a move.

ARC also participates in competitions like eYantra. In 2016, a four member team consisting of Sharath Golluri, Abhinav Kumar, Shivam Bhagat and Nikhilansh PV made it to the final stages of the eYantra, a prestigious annual robotics competition conducted by IIT Bombay.

Sharath Golluri, Technical Secretary of BPHC and Treasurer of the ARC, says that ARC for him is more than just building robots – “It’s also about developing your interpersonal skills”. Sharath is an excellent example to show that your field of study in BITS is not a barrier to you following your interests. Even though his branch maybe Civil Engineering, he is probably better known for his achievements in Robotics. Inductions to ARC are usually announced late-November or in the first weeks of December. Inductions are a two-round process, the first round being a robotics project. To get inducted, you will have to make a robot that does a basic task – like cleaning floors, following a line on the floor, responding to a clap or noise, or recognize handwriting. The robotics project, which will have to be done over the winter break, will qualify you for Round 2, which is a personal interview.

Ultimately, the ARC is the Mecca of BPHC for someone interested in robotics.

Article by Rohit Dwivedula and Shreyam Kumar. Edited by Rohitt Vashishta.