Graduate / Ticket to my higher studies [3]

I know it's big but if possible someone read this and give me feedback.It will surely be very useful

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

In today's fast-paced world none has the time to carry out things manually, and hence people are finding automated as well as intelligent ways to do their work done. The branch which enables us to do this is Robotics. There is a quote by Daniel Wilson which goes something like this "There is an endless number of things that have to be discovered in robotics. A lot of this is just too fantastic for the people to believe". So as he says the Robotics field is fascinating to the level that people aren't able to believe. This is what fascinates me the most about Robotics. Here in this field, imagination is our limit and so what I do is to keep on imagining stuff and don't limit myself.

Hi Sir/Mam, I'm Sidharth and I have been working hard to make myself capable enough to pursue this field. My Facebook timeline reads" Working at developing robotics company of my own". I wrote it there around 8 years ago, ever since I have been chasing it and with this step to your institution, I believe I'm going to take a huge leap forward. From early childhood, my mother use to say about how my uncle have studied in IIT Madras(Top Engineering Institution in our Country), amidst all the hard times, he perused in what made him feel alive. I belong to a family that has always been updated with the latest technologies. My grandfather was said to be the best of his times, he was the Vice-Principle of ITI. During the earlier days when the radio was used for entertainment purposes, our home was only the place which had T.V . My grandfather was in short a great researcher who worked with all the electronics stuff. I wonder it is that I'm his grandson, that I have some part of him alive in me. That part of him along with my uncle always inspires me to chase technology and being his grandson I feel I can achieve something similar to what he has achieved in his times. There are events in my life that made me question things, always kept me inspired and kept my dreams alive. I still remember how thrilled I was when a remote-control car was gifted to me on my birthday. The moment which made me fall for it was "How come something is operating wirelessly?". It made me think, though our T.V remote was well enough to shock me, I haven't seen something in the move when I press some control buttons, I felt all of a sudden a mystical power has been granted to me which allows me to operate the remote car. I wanted to know what's behind this, but since I was very small I don't know what to do, it was something beyond the thinking of a 7-year-old guy." I want to get the answer to it" this stuck in my mind. With going on days this decision of mine became firm when I came across various electronics gadgets. Then I saw a video clip of Honda ASIMO robot in my High school days, the robot act as an attendant taking care of every person that enters its premises like giving them something to drink, navigating them to the place they want to go. I was fascinated by the fact that how can a non-living thing which theoretically doesn't have life on its own was acting so alive, I want to do this magic too, I want to learn this and I decided I'm going to be a Robotics engineer.

This thinking led me to explore the path towards robotics and ultimately after I passed from school, I took Mechatronics at Kongu Engineering College. From the first year of my college itself, I wanted to do something exceptional, but before that, I wanted to learn about the working of robots. My uncle was my mentor, At his suggestion, I started studying Arduino. There was a 10 day holiday in our college I went to Chennai (The capital of my province) and took Arduino classes . I spent every bit of time learning Arduino as much I can. On return from Chennai, I started exploring the potentials of Arduino. With the Arduino under my sleeve, I was able to learn how to control some basic output devices like DC motors, Stepper motors, Solenoid Valves while taking Inputs from sensors like IR, Ultrasonic sensor, Pezo-electric sensor, Potentiometers.

Now I was ready to build some intelligent system, to my enthusiasm in my second year I was asked by my final year seniors to code and control pneumatic cylinders in their project. The project name was "Semi-Automatic stamping machine" luckily I was also included in this project. The objective of the project was to carry out the tedious work of stamping the certificates with the HOD signature. It consists of three cylinders one for vertical movement with a rubber stamp on it(to stamp the certificates) and another vertical cylinder setup with a suction cup(which is mounted on a horizontal cylinder). At first, as the verticle cylinder(Contains rubber stamp) moves down stamping happens on the fresh certificates kept at the infeed tray, then the horizontal cylinder with vacuum setup moves towards the stamped certificate, followed by it, the verticle cylinder moves downward to pick the certificate with the help of vacuum cup and place the stamped certificate in another tray. The project worked well and even was put to use for our department purpose.

The second project which we did out of interest in our leisure time was "Automatic Coconut cutting Machine", it was done to eliminate the work of coconut cutting in our college hostel, it was mostly a mechanical based project. The coconut was dropped in the funnel and from the funnel, the coconut fell onto the holder setup which we specially designed to hold all the sizes of coconuts. The holder spins with help of a rod mounted on the electrical motor. There is a spinning blade at the other end, As the holder containing the coconut spins, the coconut is cut into two halves by the spinning blade. This particular project was awarded 2nd place during Agri submission in our college. Later this was donated to our hostel mess.

The final project was something that I wanted to do unique, so I thought of building the robot from scratch. The project was dubbed " 3-axis home farming and monitoring robot".The whole process is very simple. The robot, as the name goes consists of three-axis, the first is the horizontal axis containing a lead screw, on the lead screw a frame is placed. The movement of the frame happens through the spinning of the horizontal lead screw. The frame setup consists of the end effector. The left and right movement of the end effector is facilitated by another small lead screw driven by another DC motor. For the z-axis motion of end-effector rack and pinion mechanism was used . The end effector has a funnel that borrows a small hole inside the soil. In addition to that, there is a seed feeding unit that feeds the seed - after a hole is made inside the soil. So the process goes like this, the frame moves forward, then the end-effector moves downwards creating a hole in the soil, after the hole is made, a funnel containing seeds drops one seed inside the hole, after seeds in one row are dropped the end effector is moved right and the same process is repeated for another row. To monitor whether our farm needs water, soil moisture detection modules were used and if the moisture drops below certain value water is led inside our small farm. The control unit was a PIC-18 microcontroller. We successfully design and Fabricated the 3- axis robot. We were henceforth applauded for our project in the department since our department has never witnessed a working model of 3 axes cartesian robot.

During my college days apart from the projects, I use to sit down and do help my staff with research work. The one in which I involved myself was with Dr Tony Thomas sir. A new servo valve test kit arrived in our department, I use to sit down with him in the pneumatic and hydraulics lab to work with the servo valves - noting down the displacement of hydraulic cylinder with increasing voltage in the solenoid of servo valves. Thanks to him that I was able to know in detail about servo valves and Working with him made me find the joy of researching. Because of him, I developed an interest in R&D so much, and hence by using My Rio(NI LabVIEW controller Kit) I created a small prototype of a collision-avoidance system for cars. The concept was to use ultrasonic sensors to detect any vehicle going at the front of your vehicle and reduce the speed proportionally to the vehicle at your front, eventually stopping your car if the leading car is stopped, thus avoiding our vehicle to hit the leading vehicle in case it stops of any emergency. Another application for which I developed a prototype was "Automatic Speed control for a vehicle near hospitals ", the idea is to reduce the speed(set by the Hospitals) along with turning off the horn. Doing so will avoid people from rash driving and creating noise pollution near the hospitals. All the vehicles near the hospital will be reduced to speed broadcasted by the hospital.

I was also the executive member of the Robotics club in our college, as an executive, I along with other mates was responsible for conducting various workshops on the basics of IC, sensors, Motor drivers. This use to be one of the prime workshops in our college wherein people across the various departments use to participate. At the end of the workshop, with whatever we taught, we use to guide the participants on how to build line follower robots as well as robots for robot wars. Building the robot was to be the principal motive of our workshop. At the end of each academic year, there comes the most important work of organising a symposium. This was to encourage people from within in the college as well as people from all the colleges across India to show their technical prowess in building robots.

I wanted to use every opportunity that I get. I knew in this competitive world If I have to stand apart I have to learn all across the departments, hence I attended some offline classes on LabVIEW, Solid works, Python programming, Machine vision, Firebird v robot embedded programming. I'm glad that getting enrolled in all these courses gave me a taste of all the components obliged for building my robot. This is the reason why I was able to build my 3-axis robot as a final year project.

In my quest for acquaintance apart from the college curriculum, during my holidays I went to IIT Jalandhar to study Bond Graph. It is the certified central government course offered to students. There at IIT Jalandhar, they taught us bond graph, there we were thought of how to build a graphical representation of the various physical systems. In the end, we were able to make a physical representation model of the Toyota Prius.

Other than studies I was also involved in social activities. I was part of the NSS(National Service Scheme) team on our campus and yearly once we go to the nearest village, spend about 10 days there cleaning the village, fulfilling the basic needs of the village and renovating the schools present there. In addition to that Every Sunday we do campus cleaning. Our hard work of cleaning was highly rewarded as our campus was announced to be the cleanest campus in the state.

On my way to robotics, I made sure that I get into companies related to automation so that I could use Robots. For the projects I have done I was readily accepted to be part of Titan Engineering and Automation Ltd (TEAL) as an intern. In the intern period, I worked with Rexroth servos and helped the people at the organisation to code the servos for welding applications. After 6 months I was evaluated based on my work done. To my dedication to work I was given a permanent role in the organisation. On entering the organisation I worked on different robots namely ABB, FANUC, UR, STAUBLI, ESPON integrated with vision systems of Keyence and Cognex. This expertise made me the first choice for my organisation to send me abroad to Germany and France for commissioning robots for our customers. To this day I have completed 13 projects. In one project the application to feed components from the hopper, the component might be at any orientation and the challenge was to pick and place the component. This task was the most critical task given to me and I was able to do it with few struggles but I ensured that I should finish the task. On completion of that project reputation of our company grew in the European market, such as the impact of the project.

Though I have studied much about robots and controls during my Bachelor's studies and work at TEAL, still a lot more to be done. I had a holistic knowledge of how the robot works but wanted to become a master and do specialisation, so I kept on searching for a course in which I can specialize. While doing so my eyes went on a video clip about reconfigurable robots and their benefits. I was thrilled by how these robots communicate and combine to perform a task, it's the same way as any social life would do to accomplish any task. As always I was pretty optimistic about my choice and thought of your institution.

I feel reconfigurable robots are something unique in the field of robotics. On seeing the way it works it is pretty explanatory that such robots can be made to do any sort of work . One important place where I find its application is in outer space. We know that these days scientists are more involved in finding settlements out there in mars, but the most important concern for the scientists is food and shelter. Food is something they have already dealt with but the shelter is something that remains a question. I find that reconfigurable robots are the way for shelters. These robots can be configured in any shape we need. It is of dual-purpose, firstly it can be used to perform various odd jobs and secondly, in case of any emergency it can be programmed to be a shelter for the astronauts. In case of any resettlement, the robots can be commanded to move to the desired location and configure to provide shelter again. This is one of the few examples. I believe these robots have huge potential and there are huge possibilities in which these robots can be used. Reconfigurable robots are like in the TRANSFORMERS movie series (which I saw in my childhood days) is reshaping to their advanced form which not only has the potential to transform itself into a car as I have seen in movies but also can do a plethora of jobs.

As a student, I would like to join your institution and carry my long burning fire of excelling in robotics. Looking at the capabilities of your staff, I felt that I would be able to get an ample amount of knowledge. More specifically I want to create a robot that not only remains in the research lab but goes out to assist humans in any way possible. the core job of mine will be to impact the life of an ordinary human. I believe that there is no wonderful thing such as helping others(Though by NSS) and hence I find robotics is the only branch that is going to make life easy for the people in future. Already the robots are in the way for customer use, robots are being used to attend the customer at restaurants, hotels etc, They are now put to work for cleaning the home. I even saw a robot cooking, some robots were feeding kids. In the same way, I don't want my knowledge to be used for my selfish requirements but further, it should be of use to our community. By doing so I will be able to contribute to the place which will make me capable of doing, that's your institution and the society as well.