Islamabad: Engineering robotics competition concludes

[Naveed Yaseen]

Noor Aftab
A three-day 5th national engineering robotics competition (NERC) 2009 ended here on Saturday that provided a common environment to students for the integration and evaluation of various mechanical designs, algorithms and agent architectures.

This year the contest, a joint venture of Stem Career Project-Higher Education Commission and National University of Sciences and Technology, like the last year aimed at the same application of robotics, but raised the bar by a little. The contestants came up with autonomous robots that could place objects with increased amount of precision and feedback control.

Teams of students from 107 engineering institutions, polytechnic colleges and universities across the country participated in the competition that was divided into two leagues including indigenous robots league and lego-robot league under which contestants were evaluated for prizes.

The robots were supposed to themselves find the peg-stand (by virtue of its position or any other sensing technique) and place the pegs into the pigeon holes. The students were strictly asked not to place markers, beacons or reflectors in the contest area to aid in the robot’s navigation.

Each team was given one minute to set up the machine at the start up point and four minutes to complete the task. Three retry options were also available for the participating teams but those who used it had to lose five points for each attempt.

HEC executive director Dr. Sohail Naqvi was the chief guest on the occasion.

The winning team of the competition (CASE Islamabad) was awarded with a cash prize of Rs80,000, 1st runners-up (NUST College of E&ME) Rs50,000, 2nd runners (CASE Islamabad) up Rs40,000 and 3rd runners up (NUST College of E&ME) with Rs35,000 while the winner of 3 x best engineering design — Neo (NUST College of E&ME), T-BOB (CASE Islamabad), Legend Killer Returns (NUST College of E&ME)— was given cash prize of Rs30,000.

The winning team of lego category (NWFP UET) was awarded with Rs25,000, 1st runners-up (Headstart School Islamabad) Rs15,000 and 2nd runners-up (Beaconhouse Islamabad) with Rs10,000.

Apart from these prizes, the certificate of participation were awarded to the participating students representing their respective educational institutions during the competition.

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