Inspired Karters: Formula Student
Ever since its inception in 2012, the BITSian team participating in the Formula Student (FS) competition has been designing, manufacturing, and competing every year. The team, which has consistently ranked highly, has recently decided to stop making internal combustion (IC) vehicles in favor of electric vehicles. This decision was driven by two factors – India’s goal to have all its vehicles be electric by 2030 and an overall lack of funds. Electric vehicles receive have more support from the institute and bring in more sponsorship.
Inspired Karters participated in the national level competition held in Coimbatore this January, their last IC vehicle competition, and placed 15 out of a total of around 70 teams. The team also finished in second place at the Formula Bharat Electric Vehicle Concept Challenge in October last year.
Inspired Karters plans to begin manufacturing their electric vehicle next semester, after completing final modifications to their design. An issue the team regularly faces is the procurement of parts from outside India, but the recently set-up Central Purchasing Unit has helped ease the importing process for the team.
Inspired Karters : Baja
It was founded in 2008, when two fourth years decided to do something different and manufacture an all-terrain vehicle instead of the Formula Student car that they had been working on. The team designs, fabricates, and tests the vehicle in Pilani. Every year they take part in the Baja SAE India competition. The competition consists of many events, broadly categorized as static and dynamic events. In March this year, the team participated in this year’s edition held at IIT Ropar. They ended up with a mediocre rank, but they have since identified their shortcomings, and are working on them.
The team is planning to take part in the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge, as it believes this event is in line with their original vision. The challenge involves designing, building and racing collapsible vehicles over simulated Lunar/Martian surfaces. Team members are studying the relevant matter and they plan to soon shift to this event. After having conquered rough terrestrial environments, the team now plans to go beyond and conquer harsh extra terrestrial environments.
Team BITS- Shell-Eco Marathon
Team BITS participates in the Shell Eco-Marathon – a worldwide energy efficiency competition sponsored by Royal Dutch Shell. The team was formed in 2012 and initially participated in the Prototype Gasoline category. For the past few years, however, the team has switched to participating in the Ethanol UrbanConcept. This category involves cars that are supposed to traverse ten laps of a circuit within a stipulated amount of time, using as little fuel as possible. Last year in March, the team presented their vehicle at Singapore, where they cleared the technical inspection. The car ran two laps, but couldn’t complete the track because of an engine failure.
Team BITS built the first Indian car to run on 100% Ethanol. They have since improved their design. The team is currently working on building another, lighter chassis using a carbon-fiber monocoque with better aerodynamics, an expected 30% weight reduction, and 18% drag coefficient reduction. This chassis is currently in the fabrication stage. They also plan to implement novel technologies such as ethanol direct injection, thermal barrier coating, Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) and carbon-fiber wheel rims. They will be participating in the newly set up Indian Shell Eco-Marathon Challenger event in October, 2019.
Since January 2018, a sister team to Team BITS, called BITS Charge, has been working on a battery electric vehicle. Even though their design was ready by October, they were unable to participate in the 2018 Indian Shell Eco event because of insufficient funding. Currently, the team is working on improving the power train and developing the controller. The battery electric vehicle will also compete in the Indian event in October this year. Last semester, a few members of the team began work on an autonomous driving project. They aim to participate next year in Shell’s self driving car competition called Autonomous Urban Concept Challenge.
One of the problems faced by the team is the tediousness of making payments with sponsor money held in institute accounts. This has led to significant delays in the team’s schedule. The team coordinators also feel that, besides helping them import parts, the Central Purchasing Unit is mostly unhelpful. According to them, a separate section in the Accounts department of the CPU specifically for tech teams would vastly improve the overall process.
Team AcYut
Team AcYut takes on itself the task of designing an autonomous humanoid robot capable of playing football. Credited with developing the first indigenously designed autonomous humanoid of India, they have come a long way since their initial rough approximations. Their bot now closely resembles a humanoid and participates in the Robot Soccer World Cup (RoboCup).
Over the past year, the team has made significant progress. They had their malfunctioning motors repaired and have been tuning the parameters for their current walk engine. They have also developed push recovery and stabilization on their simulation software, and are looking forward to testing them on the bot. They are also in process of implementing an alternate walk engine.
Meanwhile, they have been exploring another league in the RoboCup—the 3D Simulation League. For this, are using state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to train high-level behaviours (such as evaluating the best possible pass) and low-level behaviours (like kick, walk, and dribble).
This year, they recruited three new members after putting them through a longer-than-usual probation period, to prepare them for the new challenges that lie ahead.
Their plans for the future include implementing the push recovery stabilization on their bot and working to secure sponsorship to build a second bot, which is expected to speed up the development process significantly.
Team Anant
Team Anant’s main focus is to build a 3-U Cube Sat (Satellite) with a hyper-spectral imager as its primary payload. Formed in 2013, the team has been working in collaboration with ISRO since 2017 to achieve their goals.
Since 2016, the team has been working in the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) phase, which will culminate in the signing of an MOU between ISRO and the Institute. The PDR has been submitted and is awaiting review by ISRO. After the PDR phase, the team will begin the Critical Design Review phase.
Team Anant recently completed work on their mainframe configuration and are working on their software and hardware earnestly. Recently, new subsystem heads were chosen from the current second-year batch.
The team consists of six subsystems: On Board Computer (OBC), Electrical Power (EPS), Attitude Determination and Control, Structural and Thermal, Telemetry and Ground Station, and Payload. Twenty two new recruits have joined this year after a month-long probation, which was preceded by recruitment tests at the start of this semester.
Team Robocon
Team Robocon, originally formed with the goal of participating in the Robocon competition (an all India event held in Pune), has shifted its goals in the past year. They participated in a competition in IIT-Bombay this year, and worked on multiple projects of their own. This change in the team’s direction was brought about by the senior leadership, which decided to give their juniors a new venture to work towards and experiment upon.
They participated in two mobile robot competitions last year, one being task-based and the other quad-copter based. Apart from this, the team also presented two projects in APOGEE 2019 and participated in a few events at the same. Their other projects include the designing of a quadruped and an autonomous quad-copter.
The team, which does not have an elaborate division of subsystems, recruited ten first-year students this year.
In the near future they plan on finishing their quadruped and quad-copter projects, thereby making contributions to these new and upcoming fields.