ROBOTIX

From the 4th to the 6th February,2005, .:ROBOTIX:. will start promising a trail of innovations across the length of the country. .:ROBOTIX:. is the jewel in the crown of KSHITIJ, the annual techno-management fest of I.I.T Kharagpur. 

Brace yourself for the impact of the best brains in the country matching fire against each other in a battle arena specially laid out by one of the finest engineering institutes of the country. If that level of intellectual satisfaction has not stroked your imagination yet, try considering the cash prizes worth Rs. 1 lakh($2500) to be won.

Across the fields of Artificial Intelligence, into the realms of manually controlled machines and autonomous robots, watch sparks fly through vistas of electronics, mechanical, and software engineering ,all coalescing into the most challenging of all harmonies.

The Battle of Evermore was small fry.

Events:
Issac Asimov may not have written pure fiction after all.

The real world has often confounded the most path breaking of innovations. The reason has been consistent – the nitty gritty of hardware patchwork offers a constant challenge to the trained human brain. Robotix pays a tribute to this role of hardware through the following challenges:

Cannon Balls: Slam Dunk - The geared way ! 

If Michael Jordan was a hardware engineer, he would have probably pursued this all his life. And perhaps never retired.

The rules are simple – there is an arena with ping pong balls randomly placed. Your robot retrieves this balls and places them in a circular region bounded by an annular wall, at no point allowing itself to get into a buffer region. Manual as well as autonomous machines can take part in the event. The game will be played between two teams at the same time with teams starting from opposite ends of the arena. Only robots of the same type (manual, autonomous and semi-autonomous) will be made to play against each other. 
http://www.robotixiitkgp.com/index.php?id=cannontask

Lodestones: Laws of Attraction

“It’s a control freak thing. I wouldn’t let you understand”. S.H.Underwood.

We wonder, Mr. Underwood. In fact, we wonder very much indeed.
Embedded control enthusiasts, this is the day of reckoning. Make a fully autonomous, self contained robot which can locate Ferromagnetics from among a potpourri of wood and iron.

How good exactly is your autonomous sensing and onboard control? Your machine has to scan the arena and detect iron blocks out of nine blocks in the arena. The number of iron blocks will be unknown to the machine. The machine moves in the arena autonomously and glows a green LED each time it senses an iron block and a red one when it senses a non-iron block (i.e. a wooden one).
http://www.robotixiitkgp.com/index.p...lodestonestask

PowerBoats: Get Wet and Revving ! 

Race your speedboats to and fro, a la Stuart Little, in a test of speed and maneuverability against gusts of wind.

This event is a race on water surface. Your machine has to run on water on a specified path, take a turn around a rodeo kept in the water body and then return to the final position. The machine is not supposed to enter the returning path while it is in the advancing path and vice versa.
http://www.robotixiitkgp.com/index.p...powerboatstask

AI Events

If you have often fantasized about the power of raw intelligence shaping the actions of inane materials juxtaposed into one shining example of synchronization, Artificial Intelligence is waiting to explode inside your cranium!!!!!!

There are two events lined up for your grey cells to crack- and both require nothing more than online submissions.


Mission Mars: Explore the Red Planet!
MOTOROLA presents to you, quite simply, MISSION MARS.
The complex collective social behaviour of groups of ants, each by itself performing innocuously simple tasks is a revelation of nature's hidden order embedded in all enveloping chaos. From building gigantic structures to mind boggling coordination when hunting, these aspects of swarm intelligence have led researchers to explore their applications in fields like robotics, search, navigation, and collaborative task handling. And now, NASA has decided to mimic the ant in its future efforts to explore the belt of asteroids that lie between Mars and Jupiter and the Martian surface itself
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...ts_001227.html

Your task is to code robot ants which can 

Coordinate among themselves during their mission and to help them probe as much area of the planet as possible. Time is a constraint. You may write your code in C/C++/Java.Check out this link for details. 
http://www.robotixiitkgp.com/index.p...issionmarstask

Ahem..yes indeed, we do have the familiar cash prizes lined up for grabs again. Upto Rs 30,000 (~USD 600) is being offered. Even better - all you need to do is to submit the code to us ONLINE!!

Conquerors: The Game! 
How many hours have you battled your fatigues against virtual hordes and voracious tribes, the onset of each battle leading inexorably into new dimensions of war?

Robotix presents to you the chance to exercise those skills in the AGE OF EMPIRES saga, and convert that feel for strategy into a concrete coding platform for real time game programming. We provide you with a standard AOE command manual on our website, and we dare you to use that list to conquer the medieval world.
http://www.robotixiitkgp.com/index.p...conquerorstask

There does, indeed, exist a Gordian knot. The question is, are you Alexander?

Mission Mars and Conquerors are also part of the TRIOLOGY Tech-King Event. A Bajaj Pulsar up for the grabs!!!! (www.kshitj.iitkgp.ernet.in)

All team members of qualifying machines shall be reimbursed appropriately for their travel fares and machine parts.

For further details about the events, please visit
http://www.robotixiitkgp.com