VISAKHAPATNAM: A youth from the city Uttam Grandhi and his team mate I. Ravi Shankar (hailing from Rayagada in Orissa), both doing their B. Tech (Mech.) final at BITS, Pilani, have bagged a silver and a bronze medal at the Robogames competitions held in San Francisco from June 12 to 14.

Participants from 30 countries vied for the top honours in 70 different categories. Three teams represented India at the competitions of which two are from BITS, Pilani. Uttam, who couldn’t attend the event due to delay in the issue of Visa, gave a video demonstration of the robots at his home here on Tuesday.

Category      Their models were presented under the category ‘Art Bots’. Programmed in the Portable Grey Mats (PGM) format, the sketching robot can draw images like a seasoned artist. Aptly named ‘Michelangelo’, it earned them the silver medal.

Their ‘Cyborg’ bagged a bronze. “Our idea in making this robot is that though chips and bionics are replacing human organs, there are certain things that can’t be replicated for example: emotions,” says Uttam. They prepared the mechanical parts on their own at their college lab.
A keen art enthusiast and an artist from his childhood, Uttam says that his dabbling with the brush had come in handy in making the robots.

Uma Shankar from Chennai, his senior at college, motivated Uttam to go for robotics.
His first robot, a prototype of a hovercraft won him the third prize at the Techfest 2007 organised by IIT, Madras and the model of the ‘Industrial manipulator’ (a pick and place robot) took them to the finals at the same event the following year.

Their ‘biped’ bagged them the first prize in the tech fest organised by IIT, Mumbai, early this year.
Uttam plans to pursue his Ph. D. in robotics while his partner Ravi has set his sights on doing an MBA.

Noble plan      They plan to set up a company of their own ‘Care Robots’ in future.
“Our target is the Indian market. We want to make robot games affordable to the average Indian. We also plan to use robots to teach retarded children and assist handicapped persons with simple task,” he says.