Winning a major Engg challenge

Ashish Negi, Shivam Kumar Jha, Swayam Bansal, and Sai Tejaswi from Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology in Delhi won the most recent Lam Research Challenge in India. Lam Research, an $18-billion revenue company with a major R&D centre in India, is a global supplier of innovative wafer fabrication equipment and services to the semiconductor industry.

The challenge is a four-level competition designed to progressively test participants across theory, simulation, and real-world application. In level 1, participants individually take on domain-specific challenges across computer science, electronics, and mechanical engineering.

Top candidates are shortlisted and formed into teams for level 2, where teams are required to design and simulate a line follower robot and a robotic arm game using platforms such as ROS (robot operating system). In level 3, shortlisted teams build working prototypes using hardware kits.

This round assesses handson engineering capability, integration skills, and the ability to bring concepts to life accurately. Level 4, the grand finale, brings the top 25 teams into a live competitive arena, where they showcase and test their robots in real time.

Close to 7,000 students from 474 colleges participated. Anubhav Anand, Anumula Bharath Kumar, Daksh Sambhare, and Smit Kadu from IIT, Guwahati, stood second, and Harshan J, Mohammed Rehan Tadpatri, Thareesh Prabakaran, and Thiruchalvan Thiyagarajan from NIT, Calicut was third.