IIT Delhi’s RoboGambit: When Chess Met Robotics
IIT Delhi's ARIES Society and Robotics Club, backed by the university's Technology Innovation Hub IHFC, ran RoboGambit — a chess competition where robotic arms, not humans, had to physically execute the moves. Fifteen hostel teams entered (13 from the Delhi campus, 2 from the Abu Dhabi campus), competing first in a software simulation round and then a hardware round with real robot arms. Eleven teams built a working chess engine, but only eight got their full pipeline — camera vision, arm control and mechanical execution — working well enough to qualify for the hardware stage. Designed by students Nitye Gupta and Sanidhya Ojha, the event was a sharp reminder that thinking about chess is easy; playing it physically, under pressure, is a different challenge entirely.
