Robian poster_optTHE ELECTRICAL Engineering department of the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad Campus, since the fall of 2011, has been conducting a bi-annual robotics competition – ROBIAN. Recently, the 3rd COMSATS Robotics Competition, Robian-3 was conducted on the 26th of December 2012.

ROBIAN is a competitive and challenging contest between autonomous robots that aims to push students to take an out-of-the-box approach and construct magnificent pieces of engineering innovation. ROBIAN aspires to instill creativity and originality amongst students so that they can be motivated to bring the best out of themselves.

The Robian competition was started when a graduate of CASE university, Fahd Sikandar, joined as a lab engineer at COMSATS and gave the advice of giving a line tracking robot as an assignment to the students of Controls Systems course. And so in September of 2011, the students of the controls systems course started to work for their UGVs – Unmanned Ground Vehicles, which were assigned to traverse a set path on a specially designed arena. This first event attracted a total of teams, 21 from within the Department while the others from the University of Gujrat, International Islamic University and NUST EME. Almost Rs. 30000 worth of prize money was handed over to the winning teams. Next semester, ROBIAN12 was conducted in which Rs. 70,000 was given away to the 35 competing robots in the Spring of 2012.

In continuation of this initiative, Robian-3 was conducted in the fall 2012 semester that had the participation of 28 robots all of which were indigenous to the Department of Electrical Engineering, CIIT, Islamabad Campus. The task for this event was to traverse a complex path and than track and extinguish 2 burning candles.

182716_361987960534283_optThe winners of the Robian-3 was group CURIOSITY with team members Talha Tariq, Zeeshan Hayat, Salman Shah and M. Ishaq. Rupees 18,000 were awarded as prize money and there robot completed the tasks in 7.23 seconds.

The first runners-up team was Fire Apocalypse with team members Fahd Raza, Mariam Nazir, Mariam Nayyar and Aymen Wafa. Rs. 10000 was awarded as prize money. The group completed the tasks in 7.7 seconds.

The 2nd Runners-Up traversed the path in an exact time of 8.7 seconds. The robot BABY WARRIORS with team members Luqman, Banaras, Adil and Awais were given the Rs. 6000 award.

The two best participation award went to team INVADERS with group members Osama Amjad, Wajiha Munir and group SLASH with team members Farhood, Anum, Arooj and Hasseb.

Chief Guest of the Closing Ceremony was Dr. Haroon, DG National Testing Services and Director External Campuses CIIT.

Chief guest for the opening ceremony was Dr. Sajjad Mohsin, DEAN IT, CIIT.

Judges of the 2-day event were Dr. Haroon-ur-Rasheed, Head of Electrical Engineering Department, Pakistan Institute of Enginnering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS) and Dr. Yassar Ayaz, Head of the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Department, SMME, NUST.

The opening ceremony started at 10 am on the 26th of December while the heats round commenced at 11 am and continued till 2.30. After the lunch and prayer break, Final round started which ran from 3pm till 4.45pm.

The Chief Guest for the closing ceremony announced that the ROBIAN event will be expanded to all the 7 campuses of CIIT.

By Web Team

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