Abhyast is an autonomous vehicle being undertaken as a joint activity of IIT Kanpur and Boeing Corporation. The objective is to develop a robot which acts as an aid to the operator in carrying specific task rather than an entity which is in need of continuous attention of operator. Its a 30cm x 30cm x 30cm robot capable of navigating from source to destination using various local and global sensors and is capable of communicating to the user using pre-established GSM networks.
Abhyast Phase-II is an extension to Phase-I robot. Their were new features added to the previous robot to make navigation better and faster. This project consists of Laser scanner, a new version of Beagle board, IMU and Compass. Apart from the main robot, what made this phase special was swarm robots. These were many small robots, which could localize themself and could communicate to the master robot using X-bee module. The implementation of swarm robotics expanded the choices of navigation fields. The master robot could remotely communicate with swarm, while they can navigate in areas which are difficult for the mother bot to cover.
Abhyast has finished its third phase and this time an autonomous robot was developed that would follow a particular direction as given by the user and avoid all obstacles that come in its route and can also jump when instructed to do so. The robot will also send its position wirelessly to a ground station where its trajectory will be plotted through the use of an optical flow sensor. The jumping action was focused in the mechanical section and the electronics consisted of Beagle Board, Laser Scanner, IMU, Arduino, Xbee and optical flow sensor. The proramming was done mostly in python that runs on the onboard computer Beagle Board. The detailed plan can be found HERE.
Click here for the proposal
PhaseIII-part2 video
Abhyast Phase-IV has a swarm of flying vehicles which are capable of scanning a 3-dimensional map and send the data to a master ground vehicle that will use the data to create a map of the scanned area and plan a best possible path between any two points avoiding obstacles that cannot be traversed. This project has extremely useful application for traversing in unknown environments and perform rescue operations along with accurate mapping of the environment.
Click here for the its description
Dr. Shantanu Battacharya
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Kanpur 208016, INDIA
Phone : +91-512-2596056 (Office)
Fax : +91-512-2597408
E-mail :
bhattacs@iitk.ac.in
10 December 2013
The Phase-4 team tried to address a national concern by demonstrating a robot that could pick up suspicious objects like bombsand
take it to a safe zone. The robot was wirelessly controlled by an operator, thus saving human lives.
15 September 2013
The presentation and demonstration of the PhaseIII-part2 robot was held in the presence of Boeing officials and Director of
IIT Kanpur Prof. Indranil Manna. It was followed by awarding of certificates to the team
members involved in this activity.
6 February 2013
The presentation for the proposal of phase 3 is expected in the presence of Boeing team.
25 January 2013
The presentation for the proposal of phase 3 is scheduled in front of the professors of IIT Kanpur.