[ Wrote this after watching 3 idiots yesterday.. made me recall the flying drone connection and the IIT Chennai experience ]
[Pic : Jan 2008...At IIT Bombay, Left to Right... Gaurav,Gautam, Ashish Bhat, Me ]
As a fresherman in my new college, I was ready to explore the sea of new possibilities that were waiting to be unlocked. In the very first few weeks , I had come to know about a group of seniors who had successfully made an autonomous robot.
In India, at college level, it was by no means a small achievement. Upon that it was the first ever in my college, where they said that engineering was taught. So here they were, my seniors, the rebels who challenged all adversities and gave life to a few pieces of metal.
I had a pretty illustrated school life and was involved in a number of activities. But Engineering and the mechanics behind it always fascinated me. What was it that made the F-22’s invisible to the enemy radar ? What was it that was inside a cm square of a chip that could power huge calculations and store an unbelievable amount of data ? Was there life on any other planet ? Was Apollo 11 actually a fake mission carried out to save face in front of the Soviet Union ? These things used to make me think.
Inspite of being a fresher and with the ragging season full on , I barged into the senior hostel one fine evening along with Neeraj, my co accomplice and there we met Nilav. He was one of the those “rebels” who dared to think beyond the normal. He warmly welcomed us and told us about the robot he had made. I went nuts in shear amazement. A few chips. A few wires. I few metal pieces. All working on their own.
I was already injected with the adrenalin of fantasy that I needed to change into reality. It took me no time to barge into the Deputy Registrar’s Office and ask her what all I needed to do to make a machine that could run on its own. My flight of thoughts were smashed head-on as I came to know that there was no help. Nevertheless, I had set a mission for myself and there was no force which was capable enough to stop the imagination and desire that had already ignited my aura.
My quest for giving life to metal pieces started as early as 2nd Sem of engineering. In the middle of all this, I came in contact with two other technology freaks from my batch. By the third semester, we had realized that none of us had enough knowledge about Assembly language to code a robot.
So began another sub-journey – of equipping myself with a language that could give me means to communicate with the child that was about to be born. Tushar, another teammate of Nilav, was generous enough to lend his book on 8051 microcontroller to me. It was a huge bet. I was in 3rd semester of mechanical engineering and I was trying to decipher the logic behind assembly language from that book which was meant for students of 5th semester of electronics engineering. Passion has its own unique way. There is nothing to stop you if you have set you target once.
A week down the line, Mazdi and Mazdi’s 8051 microcontroller was lying on my bed – after solving the purpose for which it was written. I had learnt enough to try my hands on the actual bot now. All three of us, Prashant, Gautam and me. We tried. It wasn’t an actual robot. It was just a skull. But my code was not working. Something was wrong , somewhere. We couldn’t find the loop hole. 1A-006 – The room of KP-2 (boy’s hostel) where that skull of a robot was lying. All three of us tried. For hours. Nonstop. It worked finally. It was magical. That stepper motor which I had coded in assembly language using 8051 microcontroller . It was dancing beautifully to my code. I had the soul to that skull. It danced as per my directions. That stepper motor which was ripped out from the hard disk of an old CPU was not the only one dancing – all of us were dancing too.
In the meanwhile I came to know about Ashish Bhat, a student at IIT Bombay who held the record for the fastest micromouse in the country. His bot took a record 15 secs to solve the maze. One day, in my childlike innocence, I wrote a mail to NASA to ask about a few things. I never got a reply though. However, Ashish Bhat was working on Zeplin at that time. It was an autonomous flying machine. I was amazed by the man’s sheer ability to think and work on something which no one had ever dreamt of. Meanwhile, we started working on Mars Rover. It was bot which we had made for a competition at IIT Chennai. It was a robot which could solve its way out in any terrain of land or water (assuming that we knew nothing about the terrain of Mars). Generally a standard robot needs only 3 sensors (eyes – in lay man’s terms). We had placed a record 18 sensors on our bot. It had 6 times the vision of a standard robot and could detect the slightest movement of a needle. It was supposed to be flawless. We had made it that way. To be flawless.
Before judgment day at IIT Chennai, the bot was tested. Not once, not twice, but alteast 50 times. The Mars Rover was supposed to be our Titanic. Flawless. Unsinkable. Undefeatable. Its wheels were beautifully designed for navigation through any surface.
At IIT Chennai, we also saw the Chandrayan. At times when I look at the moon now, it strikes me that the object which was hardly at a hand’s distance from me a few years ago, is today collecting important information on that very planetary body which I see from my window at night. At that time I didn’t know that Chandrayan would reach the moon so soon.
Like Titanic, our Mars Rover failed in its maiden vouyage. It was hard for us to assimilate that our undefeatable bot which had the power and the intelligence to sense the slightest deviations, sunk just like the Titanic.
A lot of competitions, fame, laurels and press conferences followed. Gaurav joined us for IIT Mumbai and Prashant took a brief pause from Robotics. It was the three of us – Gautam, Gaurav and me at IIT Mumbai. We met Ashish Bhat (the same guy who was working on that flying robot) over there. Ashish Bhat started a company of his own called Idea Forge and we started a company of our own called Roboticwares.
Time went by and Ashish Bhat completed his Zeplin (the unmanned flying object). We completed our four years of college. I left robotics and Roboticwares. Ashish Bhat was awarded the “Roll of Honour” by Students Gymkhana, IIT Mumbai for technical activities during his stay at IIT. This award was given to an IIT Bombay student after a span of 8 years. I was awarded the “Glory of Mechanical Department” award and a few letters by the University Authorities to appreciate my contribution to the University.
Later, the directors of the popular Bollywood movie “3 idiots” approached Ashish Bhat for using his bot Zepplin in their movie. The flying machine which he had made, was handled by Amir Khan in the song “All izz well”. The same flying machine whose birth and adolescence I had witnessed and closely followed on the internet. How eagerly I used to wait for the next video of Zepplin to be uploaded by Ashish Bhat, when it could fly for only a few seconds.
Roboticwares went on to invent a gas leakage sensor system for which Gautam got an award by MIT.
Recently, I read in the news that DRDO has tied up with IdeaForge (Ashish Bhat’s company) to refine the unmanned flying vehicle, now named Netra – and is learnt to be preparing to pitch it into the Armed forces.
Roboticwares is creating a sensation everywhere by the “Suraksha” device which was invented in a small messy hostel like bachelor’s room in Bhubaneswar.
As I once again watched the movie 3 idiots yesterday, I could recall my former self. The person who loved to play with technology. Those wires, sensors, microcontrollers – all of them mesmerized me. Or maybe that hidden engineer in me is still roaring to come out again…
