e-Yantra, IIT Bombay grooms top-rate engineering talent in tier-2, tier-3 cities in the 11th e-Yantra Robotics Competition (eYRC)

Mumbai : For two days from 31st March-1st April 2023, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, resonated with engineering exuberance from students from the nooks and corners of the country. They gathered for the Grand Finale of the 11th edition of the coveted e-Yantra Robotics Competition (eYRC). The annual competition is revered by engineering students for its competition-based training that often sees students from smaller towns outperforming many of the bigger institutions, including the IITs.

A total of 35 finalists battled it out with their final projects for a collective prize amount of Rs 1 Crore that includes robotic kits, cash prizes, goodies & the chance to win a Summer Internship at e-Yantra. The much sought-after competition has been training participants on a number of skills through hands-on training, since its commencement in 2012.

The Robotics Competition is part of the e-Yantra Project hosted at the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Department of IIT Bombay and funded by the Ministry of Education (MoE). The mission and vision of e-Yantra is to train students for skills beyond formal theoretical and experimental courses through task-based learning (TBL) to solve real-world problems using technology.

This year, a whopping 3,252 teams comprising around 12,000 students registered for eYRC. The gamified problem statements (called Themes) of this year’s Robotics Competition were purposed to sensitize participants to problems of using technology in ‘FUTURE CITIES’, through 7 unique themes:

1. Functional RoadBot (FB) – the theme caters to monitoring and assessment of road conditions and seeking solutions. It trains participants in the powerful paradigm of “Functional Programming” used to build state-of-the-art software systems such as even the WhatsApp system.
2. Krishi Bot (KB) – In this theme, participants program an agriculture automation robot for future cities to navigate a greenhouse and perform harvesting, and mastering autonomous navigation of mobile robot, detection and localization of the vegetables, and manipulation of a robotic arm to harvest vegetables.
3. Pharma Bot (PB) – this theme addresses the delivery of medicines to the doorstep in using “smart mobility” in ‘Smart Cities’.
4. Swatchhta Bot (SB) – this theme articulates the navigation of a city and collection of segregated waste to ensure automated cleanliness.
5. Delivery Bike – Here, the teams developed a Self-Balancing Bike, mastering complex Control Systems design algorithms to balance a bike in a delivery-based theme. .
6. Sentinel Drone (SD) – in this theme, nano drones were assembled and leveraged and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) were mastered in automating surveillance tasks.
7. HolA Bot (HB) – In this theme, the teams built a “holonomic drive” Bot that autonomously painted pictures on an arena.

Across these seven themes, the participants were trained in technical knowledge of Robot Operating System (ROS), Drone Control, Machine Learning, Image Processing, 3D Designing, Embedded Systems, Control Systems Design, Functional Programming, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) programming, Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing and much more during the 6-month cycle of the 11th edition of this competition, launched in August 2022.

Principal Investigator of the e-Yantra project, Prof. Kavi Arya from the Dept. of Computer Science, IIT Bombay, says, “The e-Yantra Robotics Competition (eYRC) is unique in that it trains students in complex engineering skills online. We offer them the problems in the form of themes, and give them tools and training to discover disruptive solutions that may impact the future of living. Young minds have proven to us to have an endless potential and every year we have seen the participants overcoming even more challenging problems. That is the whole purpose of this competition, that is a collaborative exercise where student teams compete while learning and learn whilst competing.”

After rigorous rounds of training and collaborative learning, all the 35 finalist teams from various institutions from smaller cities and towns like Arasur (TN), Barton Hill (Kerala), Ichalkaranji (Maharashtra), Gorakhpur (UP), Jodhpur (Rajasthan), and Tiruchirappalli (TN), outshone many bigger institutions with their masterful performances. The IIT Bpmbay faculty jury were astounded with their understanding of such tough themes and marvelled at their engineering maturity and articulate responses to technical questions.

The participants got a chance to win a 6-week all-expense-paid Summer Internship program to work on ambitious technical projects as well as to have an exposure to entrepreneurship and soft skills. The internship program apart from its rigorous technical program also exposes them to lectures on geo-politics, geo-economics and other varied topics that has always proven to be transformational.

Now in its 3rd Phase, the e-Yantra Project has been funded by the Ministry of Education (MoE), Government of India. The project, hosted at IIT-Bombay, has been successfully running and delivering various training through competitions since its inception in 2009. It has enabled over 2 Lacs students from more than 3000 colleges to benefit through its various initiatives. Over the years, the competition has enabled top-rate placements, has ignited an inclination to postgraduate study and has inspired participants to build startups.

e-Yantra adopts a ‘Learning while Competing” outlook across various initiatives including the Innovation Challenge, and the e-Yantra Lab set-up Initiative. An e-Yantra Symposium’23 to be held from 5th-6th April, 2023 will hold deliberations on all the e-Yantra initiatives and host the finals of a “Startup Challenge.” The Symposium is an exclusive event with participation from 450+ e-Yantra Lab Colleges across the country. The Symposium hosts inspiring keynote sessions, panel discussions and exchange of ideas among the e-Yantra labs.

For list of winners and details on projects, please visit: https://portal.e-yantra.org/finale