(live-PR.com) - The fifth edition of RoboGames (www.RoboGames.net) involving 18 Countries, 58 Events, 176 Teams, 482 Entries, 504 Robots, and 563 Engineers was scheduled from Friday-Sunday, June 13-15, 2007 at Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, San Francisco California. The participating countries included USA, Korea, Austria, UK, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Taiwan, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, Denmark and India.

Samay Kohli, Arpit Mohan, Harsh Sinha, Prayag Mukherjee and Sushma Vallabhaneni students from BITS Pilani which is one among the top ranking universities in India today dreamt, conceived, fabricated, tested and put India’s First Humanoid Acyut (imperishable) in action. They were mentored by Proud to be a BITSian and President of BITS Alumni Association (BITSAA) Prof R K Mittal Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Computer Science who is also presently the Dean for Academic Registration and Counselling at BITS Pilani. Dr Ravi Mittal has also authored a book titled Robotics and Control (ISBN 0070482934 ISBN-13 9780070482937) published by Tata McGraw-Hill.

The inspiration for the Humanoid project happened when a delegate from Singapore demonstrated a humanoid at the International Conference on Emerging Mechanical Technology Macro to Nano held at BITS Pilani during 16 – 18 Feb 2007 (www.bits-pilani.ac.in:12371/). After the conference a group of BITS students asked Dr Mittal Can We and Dr Mittal said Yes We can and We Will and the Race for Humanoid capable of performing a plethora of functions such as walking, dancing, climbing stairs, playing football, etc. started.

The movers and shakers from alumni batch of 76-81 from BITS Pilani who celebrated their Silver Jubilee Reunion at Pilani during October 2006 got excited by the ACYUT Humanoid Project and stepped in to support the efforts morally, technically and financially and then on it became a Mission with Passion to reach the RoboGames 2008.

One of the alumnus of the Institute Viggy Mokkarala Executive Vice President, Envestnet Asset Management Inc on finding a girl in the ACYUT mission remarked “I, for one, and as a father of a 17 year old girl, will go out of my way to encourage a BITS woman engineer to go the extra distance and go for something like this project.” In fact enrollment of girls for higher education at BITS is itself a revealing statistics.

Subodh Karnik who needs no introduction arranged for free air tickets for the team’s travel. Sierra Atlantic Raju Reddy arranged for corporate funding and taking care of a good portion of the team's stay in the bay area, transportation, food, etc. Other BITSians like Arun Lakhotia have sponsored the team trip to Louisiana University (travel, accomodation and food/logistics) and Nasir has arranged for the students' stay in the New York area.

BITS-Pilani Alumni Association (BITSAA SVC Chapter) and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) co-hosted the reception on June 17, 2008 at TiE Silicon Valley Office, Santa Clara , CA for the Humanoid where the students from BITS Pilani displayed ACYUT and its prowess on the soccer field and the dance floor!

Its a matter of Pride that in the Humanoid rounds of RoboGames ACYUT put a gallant fight against the Korean robo and lost narrowly 11-10 score and stood at a credible 6th position out of 30. Putting ACYUT to dance to DHOOM song was a roaring hit item. ACYUT might have lacked the hi fi hardware the Korean Robo had but the Software of ACYUT was truly owner's pride and neighbor's envy. Cypress Semiconductors impressed by the performance standards of ACYUT have promised support to the tune of $10,000 for further efforts and sponsorship from various others also are coming up.

In the times to come ACYUT the imperishable is bound to add more and more glory to Indian expertise in this field.

About BITSAA: One among the top ranking universities in India today, Birla Institute of Technology and Science - BITS Pilani Rajasthan which has the reputation of pioneering the online examinations for admissions through the path breaking BITSAT and setting a benchmark in industry university collaborations offers degrees in various disciplines presently at Pilani, Dubai, Goa campuses and in the short future at Hyderabad campus apart from an array of work integrated learning programmes for HRD of a vast spectrum of Indian corporates. BITSAA is the alumni association of the Institute whose alumni are spread across the globe from Australia to America.