Robotic ride from backwaters to Nasa

kochi: Robotics has always been a passion for T. Jayakrishnan, and a recent event conducted by NASA was just the right reason for him to look beyond Earth. This founder of the startup, Asimov Robotics, the firm which attracted eyeballs across India for making a robotic umpire for cricket a while ago created a prototype of a space explorer in 48 hours as part of the NASA challenge.

He is now going ahead with the prototype of the space rover called Hamer, a 5:1 scaled down model having a 3,000 square cms footprint and a ground clearance variable from 15 cms to 30 cms, with encouraging signals from space experts.

Inspired from the locomotion of rabbit, the proposed rover seamlessly blends the advantages of wheeled, tracked and legged mechanisms. “Different types of locomotion can be switched back and forth on demand as well as autonomously based on the terrain characteristics,” Mr Jayakrishnan, who did his B Tech in electronics at Model Engineering College, Kochi, explained.

Unlike conventional rovers, Asimov Robotics’s design has dual arm manipulation and task-based tool selection, which is better-equipped for the space tasks than the single arm that is being used currently. Each arm has proximity sensors and cameras mounted on it in addition to finger grippers. A 2D and 3D vision system is available on board to identify the terrain characteristics as well as to help tele-monitoring for accurate manipulation.

According to  Jayakrishnan, organisation like Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) can consider cost-effective and capable indigenous rovers for projects like Chandrayaan instead of importing them from other countries. “I also see a good international market if one can better the foreign designs,” he said, adding that he had many aces up on his sleeves but not has decided not to reveal everything now for obvious business reasons as he wanted to patent the intellectual property first.

Jayakrishnan, who began his journey as an innovator in 2012 by selling his property, is now a relieved man as he starts making money as his robots have many takers now in industry, including a US giant like Black I Robotics, and also many educational institutions in India. ASIMOV is also working on a line of robotics and software built for defence, manufacturing, agriculture, security and entertainment.

Recently, Jayakrishnan also attracted angel fund to the tune of '28 lakh from Ritish Malik, a serial investor. From a one-man army in 2012, his company has since grown to a team of eight. In addition to this, he has also outsourced work to a group of  IIT-Guwahati students.