The autonomous flying vehicle beat 28 world universities in an acclaimed international competition
After AcYut – the first humanoid from BITS Pilani, which has been on a winning spree since 2008 at different world forums, this is the second achievement of the students of BITS Pilani to bring laurels to the Institute. The Aerial Robot, developed by students of BITS Pilani, Dubai Campus, placed first in the International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) held recently at North Dakota in the United States. At the event the aerial robot successfully located an independent target marked as the office of the ‘Chief of Security’. This task was accomplished under ten minutes without setting off laser barrier alarms.
The IARC’s mission is to design and develop an autonomous indoor flying vehicle that can navigate through an unknown indoor environment, strewn with obstacles, and search the area to locate and retrieve the target: a 100-gram object. Students from 28 universities across the globe had developed prototypes of flying robots with artificial intelligence in this competition. The team from BITS Pilani, Dubai Campus comprised of Team leader Saurabh Ladha, Robin Singh, Aditya Jain, Deepan Kishore Kumar, Pavitra Bhalla, Anant Mithal, Anshul Upreti, and Prateek Joshi, who are currently students of second year to fourth year of B.E. (Hons.) in Electronics and Communications, Mechanical and Computer Science.
The BITS team built the unique contraption with several propellers under the continuous mentorship and support of Dr. R.K. Mittal, Director BITS Pilani, Dubai Campus. Speaking about the competition and the robot’s performance, Team leader Saurabh Ladha, a final year electronics and communications major, said, “My passion for flying and love for robotics motivated me to build this aerial robot. Although it was a challenging endeavour as no human interference was allowed during the ‘mission’ and the robot had to ‘think’ and ‘decide’ for itself, the team with the guidance of Dr. R.K. Mittal and application of skills in control systems, Artificial Intelligence and Image processing completed the operation successfully.”
The Team IFOR (Intelligent Flying Object Reconnaissance) is a project sponsored by Intel and the BITSAA International. “Intel wanted to buy one of these robots for themselves. They funded the hardware and software, which was built by us,” said Ladha.
With an autonomous nature, the Aerial Robot employs a scanning laser range finder, in addition to other sensors to acquire knowledge of any unknown indoor layout/environment and infiltrate through a 1-metre by 1-metre window. The vehicle can navigate through any walled structure and avoid obstacles with absolutely no human interference. Additionally, the prototype can be modified instantly to operate outdoors and can perform a variety of applications with its search, rescue and real-time tracking features.