When the robots fought for supremacy(Featured Technology Talk)

Watching the spectators enthusiastically cheer on two robots in a fight, one could not help but notice that nearly all of them were boys, while only a handful were girls who often looked at their mobile phones, without really responding to the drama of the arena of “Robot War”.

The event, organised by the National Institute of Technology–Karnataka, saw 30 teams from numerous colleges, all of whom had built their own robots.

Irrespective of whether the women participated in building the robots, the students controlling the proceedings on Friday were all men. The enthusiastic cheering and whistling confirmed the adage that boys will be boys.

It was an interesting competition with the participants putting together a variety of robots on wheels. The goal was to damage the other team's machine and each robot was equipped with some mechanism for that purpose. One had a cutting tool attached to it while another had a hammer that rotated.

Loud cheers went up when one of the robots managed to push the other one off the arena — which was essentially a platform raised on rubber tyres. One team got disqualified for pulling the wires of the opposing team.

There was one team which was not satisfied with the results. The team from a college in Bangalore was upset with the ruling of the judges.