The success of any event is usually determined by the impact it has on the public memory both before and after it occurs. While most events are discussed casually in informal gatherings and are usually given credence only as a part of gossip. The discussions don't yield to much and are usually erased from memory not long after. But, then there are a few events, which create so much buzz that the general populace cannot have enough of it. Everywhere you turn around you hear minds of various caliber discuss these events and the buzz surrounding the event doesn't abate for quite some time. The World Record by the students of Kidobotikz was one such event.
The entire grapevine was abuzz about the activity leading up to the event . Now that its been half a week since the event and yet people still cannot get enough of it. For it is not quite often that one gets to witness a world record, much less a one that was set by school kids.
The days leading up to the event were filled with inquiries from various sections of the print and social media trying to get more information about the event and the kids taking part in it. Every caller had a sigh of disbelief when they found out that the kids setting the record were kids of age not elder than 17.
Kidobotikz Kids with Chutti TV for an intervieww before the event
The premises of Kidobotikz were thronged by media persons from various television channels and radio stations trying to get a interview or two out of the participants of the world record event. News channels like Sun News and Thanthi TV covered the event, while Chennai Live - 104.8 FM took the students on air with their talk show and had an interesting interview with them. Chutti TV actually went a step ahead and decided to do a live telecast of our program on their facebook page. The video has ever since garnered quite a lot of attention. 4 days have elapsed since the successful conclusion of the World Record and people haven’t forgotten us yet. Every photo and video post related to the event have garnered a lot of likes and shares. The entire team behind behind the event is quite thrilled at the outcome of the event. It reiterates the fact that if you try hard and change the world’s perception on an issue, the world’s perception of you changes.
According to the Surrey Space Centre, there are some 7,000 tonnes (7,716 tons) of space debris circling the Earth, consisting of dead satellites, booster rocket stages, paint chips, and shrapnel from collisions. Whizzing in orbit at tens of thousands of miles per hour, even a small fragment could destroy a satellite. To help clean things up, the Centre has announced that it is leading a mission early next year to send the RemoveDebris demonstrator into orbit to test low-cost technologies that could be used to collect and remove space debris.
With the backing of the European Commission, the RemoveDebris mission is led by the Surrey Space Centre in partnership with Airbus, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) and others. It consists of a small cubical satellite based on the SSTL X-50 platform and is designed to carry four experimental payloads, cameras, and bays for two cubesats that will play the part of "debris."
If everything goes according to schedule, RemoveDebris will travel to the International Space Station in early 2017, where it will be launched into space. It will then move into a lower orbit, to carry out four experiments before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere to burn up.
Net Experiment
In the first experiment, a cubesat designated DS-1 will be released. As it travels away from the satellite, it will inflate a balloon, which will act as a deorbit device while providing a larger target for RemoveDebris to aim at. When it reaches a range of about seven meters (23 ft), a weighted net developed by Airbus will be fired at the Cubesat.
The net will wrap around the satellite and the balloon while cameras record the results. The balloon will slow the cubesat down until it re-enters the atmosphere, though in a real operation the "debris" would be snared by the clean-up satellite and towed away for disposal.
Vision-Based Navigation (VBN) Experiment
In this, the second cubesat (DS-2) will be released and two stereoscopic vision-based navigation (VBN) cameras and a Lidar system will track it. The purpose of this is to test VBN systems under space conditions as a way of rendezvousing with and capturing tumbling space debris, such as a damaged or derelict satellite.
Harpoon and Deployable Target Experiment
The third experiment is a harpoon, which is designed to impale debris for collection. In this case, the satellite will deploy a 10 x 10 cm (4 x 4 in) target on a boom sticking out 1.5 m (4.9 ft). The harpoon will fire at the target and a toggle will spring out to prevent it from slipping out again.
The final experiment involves the RemoveDebris satellite itself. When the other three experiments have been completed, it will release an umbrella-like mylar sail on carbon fiber booms and an inflation device will spread the sail out to a width of one meter (3.3 ft). Once in position, the sail will catch onto the tenuous remnants of the upper atmosphere and act like an airbrake in the same way as the balloon in the net experiment. The satellite will slow down, lose altitude, and eventually burn up on re-entry.
Dragsail Experiment
"Various orbits around the Earth that are commonly used for satellites and space missions are full of junk, which is a significant danger to our current and future spacecraft," says Dr Jason Forshaw, Surrey Space Centre project manager on the RemoveDebris team."Certain orbits – which are commonly used for imaging the earth, disaster monitoring and weather observation – are quickly filling up with junk, which could jeopardize the important satellites orbiting there. A future big impact between junk in that orbit could result in a real life 'Gravity-like' chain reaction of collisions. The international community needs to start working together now to remove space junk. The space around Earth is part of Earth's environment and keeping it clean is a common responsibility. Our mission, RemoveDebris, is one of the first concerted efforts to pioneer future technologies to remove space junk."
It’s been 3 days since the World Record was set and the excitement here at Kidobotikz has still barely come down. For it not often that you witness a world record, much less be a part of it yourself. It was an absolute stunner of an event. The event was a spectacle for everyone who was there to witness it and it was kind of a see it to believe it event.
It is an absolute pleasure as I rekindle my memories of that day. The morning was rather a pleasant one at Bessy with all of us assembling there well before daybreak. With some time spent in arranging the stage and the tables for the stage, we awaited the arrival of students. Kids with all their early morning blues notwithstanding, were themselves punctual as we witnessed a strong entry of student just before dawn. Within a matter of 10~15 minutes all of them had arrived with their parents and were dressed in their Kidobotikz tees. Just as the sun’s orange rays filled the sky, it was a sea of blue at bessy in front of the actual sea.
As soon as the emcee arrived and registration began, all the students got registered and made a beeline to the makeshift assembly line. For the next half hour, the assembly line was a magician’s den as the kids started fashioning a full fledged ATV robot from scratch. There was absolute bonhomie among the kids as they raced against each other and time to get the robots completed. The entire process activity of getting the robots to foolproof working condition took the kids less than half hour. When the final student had completed his robot, it was just 32 minutes 16 seconds and the world record was set.
With this record set, the onus was for the next section of the event where all the assembled on the sand to ride their bots in a rally. 103 robots as against the originally envisaged 101 were assembled in a line on the beach and were rallied across the sand. By 7.50 AM the last bot was past the finish line bringing the curtains down on a memorable event. This was followed by a barrage of questions from onlookers and personnel from media. For the uninitiated, this record was one that they hadn’t fathomed in the wildest of their dreams. As the news of this event flowed across the city, the news started appearing on quite a few forums and the news is still making waves across the city.
Congrats to the kids’ efforts and their parents’ support.
Last year, Amazon kicked off its inaugural Picking Challenge to encourage teams to create robots able to perform the task of an Amazon stock picker. This year the competition was expanded to include not only picking items from a shelf and placing them in a container, but the reverse as well – and a team from the Netherlands has claimed victories in both.
This year's pick task, which carries over from last year but has been made more difficult, requires robots to grab target items from a shelf and place them in a container. Conversely, the stow task involves the robot removing items from a box and placing them back on the shelf. They sound like very simple tasks for a human, but for robot competitors it requires a sophisticated array of sensors, moving parts and artificial intelligence.
The robots have a time limit to grab as many items as they can, after which points are tallied up according to the number and value of those items retrieved, and deducted for dropped or damaged goods.
Team Delft, made up of engineers from the Delft University of Technology and the company Delft Robotics, won the stow task by a fairly large margin, gathering 214 points with the runner-up managing 186 and third place coming in at 164.
The pick task was more of a nail-biter. After drawing on 105 points with a Japanese team, the competition went into an overtime round where the fastest team to pick an item would be crowned the winner. Delft's robot completed the task about 30 seconds faster than its rival, earning itself both titles.
The winning robot is built according to industry standards, equipped with an arm allowing seven degrees of movement, 3D cameras and a specially-designed gripper. The software components used to control the robot were developed with the Robot Operating System for industry (ROS-Industrial) and will be released as open source software by the team. The team attributes the robot's success to it being robust and adaptable.
You can see a time-lapse video of the robot in action below.
When people use the phrase “Child’s Play”, the term is more often than not used to describe something of insignificance, something that is quite repetitive and mundane. It has always been used to describe activities that children would do to just keep themselves occupied but the task in itself is not of much value. We at Kidobotikz have always believed this to be unfair to the young ones. Kids do the tasks of insignificance because anything that can be significant usually requires awareness of tools and processes that are quite beyond the understanding of any average kid. Take the example of science. Despite efforts by educators across the planet, ‘science kits’ have never progressed beyond the bedrooms of kids and has always been considered a leisure activity for children rather than one that can play an active role in their classrooms. This is a stigma that Kidobotikz has always desired to break and thanks to the support of hundreds of our students and their parents, we have been able to redefine the concept of “Child’s Play”.
“It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.”- Ann Anders
Keeping full faith behind the emotion of the aforementioned quote, we at Kidobotikz just decided to teach our students about the beautiful world of robotics. Every student that joins the Kidobotikz family learns the “A to Z” of robotics in a way nobody could’ve ever fathomed. Festering in every corner of Kidobotikz’s classrooms are students who potentially could disrupt the face of the planet with the intuitive understanding of technology that they acquire here at Kidobotikz. Understanding the complex concepts of electronics, mechanics and computer programming in a holistic manner is something all engineers crave for. But being able to acquire the same in a year’s span while still being in school is something that is as revolutionary as it appears futuristic. It is something no forecaster could’ve ever foretold. It is something no educator ever imagined. It is something no futurist ever felt achievable.
But thanks to Kidobotikz, the future is already here.
Hundreds of students and thousands of projects later we are already online imparting the knowledge of robots to school kids across the nation. If you would like to make a change in the way kids view education, wait no more. Talk about us to the next kid you come across and ignite his dreams.
Jupiter got a little less lonely today as NASA's Juno deep-space probe arrived after a five-year journey capped by a dramatic engine maneuver. The space agency's Deep Space Network has confirmed that the unmanned spacecraft successfully initiated a 35-minute course correction burn at 8:18 pm EDT (Earth Receive Time) that placed it in orbit around the Solar System's largest planet for a 20-month science mission.
According to NASA, Juno's final path to Jupiter orbit began about four days ago when the spacecraft received its final updates and reconfigured itself for the engine burn. All of the science instruments were powered down and some of the onboard computer's fault detection systems were taken offline to avoid interference with the maneuver. Instead, the computer was ordered to execute a quick shutdown/restart procedure in the event of trouble to prevent interrupting the engine burn.
Two hours before the burn, the probe turned away from the Sun to position the main engine at the correct angle. From then until the end of the burn, Juno was on battery power. Half an hour before engine ignition the spacecraft stabilized its attitude and increased its rotation from two to five revolutions per minute.
Because Jupiter is 540 million mi (869 million km) away, it takes 48 minutes and 19 seconds for signals to travel back to Earth, so the entire course correction was carried out entirely under autonomous control. As a jubilant mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory monitored the flight, the burn completed at 8:53 p.m. PDT (Earth Receive Time). Juno shut down its main engine and reduced its rotation back to two RPM and pointed its panels back toward the Sun.
About 58 minutes after the start of the maneuver, Juno resumed telemetry transmission to Earth. The orbiter is programmed to switch its scientific instruments back on in about two days.
Named after the Roman goddess and wife of Jupiter, Juno is the first solar-powered spacecraft sent into the outer Solar System, the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, and the first to orbit its poles. With its giant solar panels, Juno is about as big as a basketball court and it has a specially hardened titanium vault to protect its avionics from Jupiter's intense radiation belts.
Juno lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida atop an Atlas/Centaur rocket on August 5, 2011. It arrived at Jupiter almost five years later after a roundabout orbit that sent it on a flyby of Earth in 2013 to build up speed to match orbits with Jupiter, resulting in a total distance traveled of 1.7 billion mi (2.8 billion km).
The Juno mission is tasked with returning the highest-resolution images of Jupiter in history with a special emphasis on the polar regions. It will look for clues regarding Jupiter's formation, determine the deep structure of the planet, and study its magnetic fields and the giant aurorae at the poles.
Currently, Juno is headed into a 53.5-day temporary orbit to conserve propellant. A subsequent burn in October will move the orbiter into its planned, highly eccentric 14-day orbit that will bring it within 2,600 mi (4,200 km) of Jupiter's cloud tops. Its scientific mission will continue for about 20 months, after which the local radiation will have degraded Juno's avionics. On February 20, 2018, it will make a controlled dive into the Jovian atmosphere, where it will burn up to avoid biological contamination of Jupiter's moons.
It’s the eve before the big event and everyone can barely contain the excitement. The rooms are so fully that one can barely recognize any voice under the commotion. Festive atmosphere has descended upon all the parents and students who are taking part in the event. The fact that there was a slight drizzle outside and a rather overcast sky seems to have no effect on the entire gathering. With all the positivity and optimism, I would like to proudly announce “All set !” and we are good to go. One has to appreciate both the parents and the students who have given their time and resources to get ready for this event. And it goes without mention that all this would not be possible without the immense backing of the planning team. While it goes without saying that tomorrow’s event will be an astounding success, the credit for this will not be equally awarded if it isn’t dedicated to every single person at Kidobotikz. Every team be it the designing team, the animation team, the sales team or the human resource team, all of them have played a significant role in putting together every single aspect of this event. So, if the credit has to be given to someone, it actually would be everyone.
Moving on to the format of the event, the event would involve 101 All Terrain Vehicle Robots being assembles at the site by the students and would be then rallied across the beach in a line formation. Each student will be building one robot and the time for the assembly is expected to be half an hour. The jury for the event would be Assist World Records who will be issuing a certificate to every participant after the successful completion of the event. This record rally is being organized to promote the MAKER MOVEMENT and its role in technically empowering kids of the modern age.
This could not have been possible without the immense support of our supporters and sponsors. We take immense pride in thanking The Hindu for allotting us space on the as a part of their Car Free Sunday initiative. We also would like to thank our event coordinator ezoneINDIA who have offered us immense support in staging the event. Last but least, we express our gratitude to The Corporation of Chennai and the Tamil Nadu Police for allowing us to conduct this record. We extend our warmest invitations to all of the citizens and netizens of Chennai and we request you humbly to help us make this event a great success by turning up in great numbers. For, it will be an event that will go down in history and one that will be cherished in our memories for a very long time.
The entire grapevine was abuzz about the activity leading up to the event . Now that its been half a week since the event and yet people still cannot get enough of it. For it is not quite often that one gets to witness a world record, much less a one that was set by school kids. 
