The 23rd Warrior?

This was a robot that I built for a robotics competition called Baskybots where robots were made to play basketball. As for the rationale behind the christening...replace the 'unlucky' number 13 of 'The 13th Warrior' (a Michael Chrichton book inspired movie) with the famous number 23 of Michael Jordan, the NBA king!

The place...

Baskybots - robotics competition conducted at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in February 2002. The competition was a part of Techkriti 2002, an annual technology festival at IITK.

The competition...

The competition was conducted in two levels. The first level was for manually controlled robots (the level in which I participated) and the second was for the autonomous robots.

The game...

Two robots were pitted against each other in an arena with ping pong balls of different colors corresponding to different point values placed at fixed locations on the board. The robot that baskets the maximum points wins the game. The basket is placed at the opposite end of the board.

The rules...

The rules of the game and other details can be accessed at 
http://www.iitk.ac.in/techkriti/robotics_manual_details.htm

The arena...

The design...

The final design that was transformed into three dimensions actually took a long time to evolve. This was the first competition where I was involved in the game with my robot. Hence, I put in a lot of thought analysing how I should be playing the game and what my opponent's robot would look like.

The 23rd Warrior was built as modules that could be assembled or dismantled as required. This gave a high degree of flexibility in case of damage during the course of the game. The game allowed blocking the opponent and this also necessitated a strong framework.

The drive module was a twin DC motor assemblage where the internally geared motors were fixed directly to the wheel hub. The robot had just two wheels and a pair of idlers in front. It also had the capability of a differential turn.

The next module was the pulley-collecting plate system. A rectangular collecting plate was built to collect as much balls as possible (within the maximum allowed points aggregate). This plate was lifted using a two-point support over a height of 13cms by a motor driven pulley. The height corresponded to the height of the basket with some clearance. A counterbalance was used at the other end to reduce the torque requirement of the pulley motor.

The third module was the front cover plate to prevent the balls from falling off while being lifted and the restrictor plate which tapered the path of ball flow to well within the diameter of the basket.

The fourth module was the paddle assembly. A pair of paddles were used to hit the balls in front into the collecting plate. Each paddle had an individual high-torque motor.

There were two joysticks that were ergonomically designed to fit comfortably in the palm of the controller's hand. One joystick was used to control the motion and the second one for the paddle sweep and pulley action.

The elims...

The 23rd Warrior was the first robot to clear the qualifying round. The task was to pick any ball and basket it while there were no opponents. The Warrior clocked 1.8 seconds.

The D-Day performance...

The 23rd Warrior thrashed the first round opponent 40-5 and 46-14. The second round was a more intense battle, but the Warrior managed to emerge the winner. The scores were 23-25, 26-10 and 38-20.

There were moments when I believed I had an realistic chance of reaching the finals. But as it turns out always...someone wishes otherwise! I was given a taste of my own medicine in the quarterfinals. A team that had amazing manual control over its robot sent me packing (Hey...I am not putting up the scores...no way!)

A few visual memories...

 
The robot in action

Pre-game arrangement
(from left) Me, Arun Kumar, Shanthakumar