Beyond The Arena
You saw the three-minute match. We'll tell you the months-long story behind it.
35 members are holding their breath. Sweat glistens at their temples. Fingers remain crossed. One thought running in everyone’s mind: “Please let the judgement be in our favour.” This was SRM Team Robocon at DD Robocon 2026. But let us tell you how we got here. After achieving an All India Rank of 13 in DD Robocon 2025. We decided to pull ourselves by our bootstraps. From August of 2025 to the very moment we were all standing in IIT Delhi for the competition. After class lectures, there was no place to go but the lab. Countless iterations and numerous prototypes. Midnights came and went and no one realised. The team handled relocation, technical problems and fatigue seamlessly throughout the year. So when it was time for DD’26 we donned our jerseys, packed our robots and made our way up north to the capital city. A train ride full of chaos and countless iterations of “Oh my god. I think I lost my bag!” later, we finally reached Delhi. Over the span of 4 days, the team participated in numerous matches and won each of them but one. Months of sleepless nights had culminated into two machines that did exactly what they were designed to do. R1 lifted its boxes and wielded the weapons with precision. R2 assembled and delivered under pressure. Every line of code, every redesigned bracket led us to those three minutes. And now comes the final moment. Our last match of DD Robocon’26. Three minutes of good-spirited competition, keen eyes and one thought echoing across both teams: we want to get to the semi-finals. The match concluded with both teams scoring an equal number of points. The final call was upto the judges and they decided to bring in the tie-breakers, comparing the timings of each task we completed. And in weapon assembly, we fell a few seconds short. But in good sportsmanship spirit, we congratulated the winning team. Hit our emotes and turned homewards. The award ceremony didn’t forget us, our stellar performance was lauded by every professional club and organisation present on the ground of IIT Delhi. One of the top 8 teams in the MATLAB contest and a team standing tall with an All India Rank of 5, this is our journey. You saw the three-minute match. We'll tell you the months-long history behind it. This piece was our story. Next comes our discoveries. Every design iteration, every failure, every lesson learned. This technical blog will be our attempt to make robotics a little less intimidating and technology a little more accessible. Join us as we document all our learning in simple, easy-to-understand articles. Let’s advance robotics together.
