MIT's 'Project MANAS' emerges best at world robotics meet

Manipal: Manipal Institute of Technology’s Project MANAS, the robot named “Solo”, clinched the top place at the Annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) held at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, USA earlier this month. Competing against 35 teams from across the globe including  IIT-Madras, IIT-Kharagpur, DTU and others from India, Solo emerged the best. The team got a cash prize of $3,800.

“A creditable performance indeed, considering that this was only their second appearance in the competition,” said MIT Director, Dr Srikanth Rao. He added, “The students have done well for themselves and have brought laurels for the country and Manipal Academy of Higher Education. I am sure with this experience, they will continue to do well in future as well”.

Project MANAS improved their overall performance considerably since the last time when they had finished ninth overall.  Apart from bagging the Grand Prize (for the overall) the team also bagged the first prize in interoperability profile challenge, second in design challenge and sixth in cyber security.

The team was led by Siddhartha Venkatraman, Shrijit Singh and the other members were: Arya Karani, Ansel Dias, Rakshit Jain, Shivesh Khaitan, Dheeraj Mohan, Sarathkrishnan Ramesh, Anirudh Kashyap, Nishan De’Almadia, Gokul P and Tanaya Mandke. The advisor was Ashalatha Nayak, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, MIT.