The e-Yantra Robotics Competition (eYRC-2014), a part of the e-Yantra project, has received an overwhelming response within a few days of its launch on August 1, 2014.
Over 800 teams (3,200 students) from colleges across the country have already registered for the current edition of this unique competition where, (i) students register as a team of 4 and take an online selection test (ii) selected teams are given a problem specified as a theme in a rule book (iii) teams get a robotic kit along with accessories to solve the problem and (iv) teams solve the problem in a step-by-step manner being taken through the project life cycle in a systematic way.
"This means that even students with no prior exposure can learn the concepts and come up with innovative solutions. Thus, this competition is used to impart Project Based Learning (PBL) through hands on experiments on a robotic platform where students do not have to pay any registration fee nor spend any money to buy the robotic kit.
In addition to learning the concepts and micro-controller programming students also learn soft skills such as teamwork, video-editing, and presentation skills," informed Prof. Kavi Arya, Principal Investigator, e-Yantra project.
Themes from the domain of ‘Urban Services' will be assigned this year to student teams, challenging them to develop indigenous solutions using robotics to engineer services such as Waste Management, Warehouse Management, and Emergency Fire Services. e-YRC-2014 aims to bring awareness to problems in Urban Services through themes that engage participants to solve problems in these vital domains.
The e-Yantra project is sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), under the National Mission for Education through ICT (NMEICT) to provide hands-on learning infrastructure to students who have limited access to labs and mentors. Professors Kavi Arya and Krithi Ramamritham of the Computer Science and Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay have conceptualized e-Yantra project after years of experience in teaching embedded systems.
