A webinar entitled ‘Robotics: A Practical Approach’ was organized by the Department of Engineering on 15th February at 12:00 Noon. The event witnessed close to 100 participants that included both staff and students across the departments in UTAS, Nizwa.

Dr. Bensujin B, Head of EE Section was the distinguished speaker for the session. Dr. Bensujin initially introduced the audience to the latest trends in Robotics technology and areas of applications whereby even amateurs in the field could easily relate to the essence of robotics and its influence in everyday life. He then elaborated on the possible research areas that are currently work in progress and how the academia can play a key role in researching on the same. The session was lively as he showed a video of how robots can be used to build/replace walls and jumping robots with somersault. He explained how the actions look so easy but great effort and programming is required for the robots to perform in such an accurate manner. Dr. Bensujin, then proceeded to speak about the microcontrollers and sensors used to build robots and gave a real-time description with Raspberry Pi and how it mimicked almost a real computer. He also explained the pros and cons of multiple microcontrollers and how they can be used for building robots. He concluded the session with a live session of Webots software and how it can be used to simulate the working of a robot with the actuators and sensors.

The audience found the session very interesting and informative. It induced interest among students and faculty to research in this field and apply it to their projects.