Taking on the world

What started out as just regular robotics training, turned into something much bigger when a group of young boys came together for an opportunity of a lifetime, to challenge themselves further in the field of robotics. Anav Agrawal (12), Arul Singh (11), Keshav Mohta (11) and Rivaan Vaghani (11) are part of Team Yantraman formed at RoboFun Lab Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. The group of four, through hard work and determination, were able to not only take part in one of the world’s biggest robotics competition, the VEX IQ Worlds in Kentucky, the U.S., but were also awarded the “Best Build” Award earlier this year.

“The whole thing started as a chance encounter at RoboFun, where we go for our robotics training. We had only a week to prepare for the Nationals, and then about 20-25 days later, we got through to the Global Finals,” says Keshav. “Students at RoboFun Lab are first taught about robotics, hands-on. Once they are ready with these, they opt for participating in various competitions,” says Ashwin Shah, Co-founder and Director of RoboFun Lab. “Mentors at the RoboFun Lab guide teams as they plan, strategise and implement their plans. Only when and if something goes wrong does a mentor step in to help, otherwise, 80% of the work is done by the team and only 20% by a mentor.”

For the Global Finals, the challenge this year was based on a theme named “Ring Master” where the participating teams had to make a robot that could take coloured rings from different places and stack them on poles. Each team member had a role. “Keshav was responsible for programming the robot, Arul was in charge of the STEM project, Rivaan was the driver of the robot, and I helped with the construction,” says Anav. The robots were put through tasks that had to be performed within a certain period of time. More rings of the same colours stacked on the same pole meant more points for the team. They were also judged on the basis of the robot driving and programming skills and overall teamwork. When asked about some of the challenges they had encountered, Keshav says, “Three of us had never participated in a World competition, so, we did not realise the complexity and strategy used by other teams while designing the robot. We learnt a lot from the other teams — their skills and thoughts about robotics were a true eye-opener.”

The VEX IQ Worlds is the world’s largest and biggest robotics competition according to the Guinness Book of World Records, with over 3,200 teams from around the world taking part. Teams go through a national-level competition before being able to proceed to the final competition at the Worlds in the U.S. Team Yantraman, for the Indian National Level competition, won awards for the best STEM Research and Best Robot Design. As for where the team name came from, “Yantra means machine in Sanskrit. Since the team was from India and our cultural language has roots from Sanskrit we chose the name “Yantraman”. Yantraman is like a robot run by man,” says Arul.