Robotics Workshop The Robotics Club of IIT Kanpur (called BRICS) visited our school for three days (Saturday, Sunday and Monday).
On the first day, we were divided into groups and each group was asked to come up with an efficient idea for making a fully functional boat using a DC motor and junk - like bottles, tin etc. (much like junkyard wars on discovery channel). Each group was supposed to keep in mind the following factors: -
1) Every boat must have a design to minimize drag and maximize thrust.
2) The boats must be stable so that they do not topple over when running at their maximum speed.
3) The juniors could make a unidirectional boat (one that cannot turn). But, any two groups could make a boat using two motors, so that it can turn.
4) The boats had to be designed such that, when the boat reaches the shore, it should park parallel to it.
The group from class 12, Siddharth Jain, Aatish Bhatia, Abhishek Narula and Pankaj Bajaj came up with an excellent idea of a bullet boat (their complete boat was the propeller, which propelled itself forward at a terrific speed, much like a bullet boat). A group from class 9 also came up with a very ingenious idea which used an air propeller to glide it across the surface of water

DAY 2 After a much exciting first day, everyone set down to actual robotics using the Lego Mindstorm kit (7 of which have been recently bought by the school). Even though the creative brains of Vasant Valley school came up with some mind blowing ideas, only a few could implement their ideas. But, this is not too bad, because it was their first time after all! However there were a couple of excellent 
ideas, which managed to impress the tough minds of IIT as well. Leading these ideas was that of the group from class 12 again. They made a plotter (a robot that could plot the graph of light intensity in a room as the light sensor attached to it moves). They also made the plotter plot the 
graph of simple functions like the sine and cosine function. The group of class 9 again impressed everyone with their creativity when they designed a robotic 'grabber' mounted on a car, which could move toward any object and grabbed it.

DAY 3 On day three, initially, all groups wrapped up their projects and demonstrated them to their curious friends in their respective classes. After that, all groups set down towards working on another project assigned to them by the IIT team. However, the group from class 12 continued on their project to build something quite amazing, which even impressed the IIT team. They modified their plotter into a scanner and copier, which could scan any drawing made on a roll of paper. This scanned information would be sent by a message to another robot, which copied it down onto another roll of paper. Even though this master project is still incomplete, the group is optimistic about completing within a few days. DAY 6 The class 12 projects nears completion. SIDDHARTH JAIN 12-A