ARC's Welcome to the 26 Batch

9/30/2026 / 9 minutes to read / Tags: newsletter, robotics, simulation, induction

Aug to Oct At a Glance

Our Sem started with an Interactive CAD workshop and a Browser only, Hands on ROS Workshop, both racking up insane numbers as participation, as we moved forward with inductions, we had the highest number of applications in the history of ARC, and we obviously welcomed our new inductess with projects, which you can read all about here.

Timeline: Aug -> Sept

CAD Workshop Recap

Before the ROS Workshop an even larger workshop was held, which taught the 26 Batch fundamentals of Fusion 360 and demonstrated how to design their own Carambit using the Software.

Even Prof. Sabareesh, the Mech HOD, shared valuable insights and guidance

Fusion 360 files and the Carambit demo were shared in the enthusiasts group — ping us for the model.

Linux Dual-Boot Workshop Recap: ARC × CRUx

In collaboration with CRUx, we ran a hands-on Linux dual-boot workshop which is the ideal launchpad for ROS. We gave a live walthrough of the entire Dual Boot and WSL Installation process, and helped the Atendees troubleshoot any issues they faced. Many GRUB Menu Rescues happened, Many HP Bootloader issues, many Wrong Disk Partitions were made, But everyone successfully had a Linux Machine in the end, thanks to such talented troubleshooting.

ROS Workshop Recap

We ran ROS 101 as a no-install, browser-only intro to nodes, topics, publishers and subscribers via the ROS Arcade. The goal was to get a robot to the green box using the codeblocks provided.

New way to learn fundamentals without dealing with installation headaches

# peek at what the robot sees and tell it where to go
ros2 topic echo /scan      # wall sensors
ros2 topic pub /cmd_vel    # velocity commands

You can check it out yourself!

Project Spotlights

Robodog

The Stanford Pupper Robot Dog built by ARC from scratch, this project aims to build and train a robot dog

Under M. Gnanadeep Sai

Dual Robotic Arm Coordination

Harnessing the Power of reinforcement Learning, and attempting to implement new research to manipulate objects using two Robotic Arms

Under Yash Bhatt

Amazing Hand

A Humanoid Robotic Hand built by ARC, with 3D Printed components. This project aims to manimpulate objects, mimicking movements of a real robotic hand

Under Faria and Deepansh Goyal

Our New Induction Process

If the workshops were the trailer, this was the main feature. This year’s induction ran completely through github repos, here is the main one: arc-bphc/2026-ARC-Induction and it was built to be brutally honest about what ARC actually does.

6 tasks, 3 tracks. Three easy tasks to get your hands dirty and three hard ones that demanded real digging and troubleshooting. You could attempt any task, in any order. The harder tasks ahd not “correct answer”, and they focused more on thinking ability. The whole point was breadth: mechanical intuition, embedded, simulation, or code you had to pick your fight, and excel at it.

Every submission came in as a pull request. This taught the Candidates version control by default, which is an absolute necessity when working with so many people.

Shortlisted folks were then called for interviews. We weren’t hunting for the most polished technical skills. We scored for three things in roughly this order: enthusiasm, time you can actually give, and competency.

From that pipeline, we picked 40 of the best candidates for ARC, and we couldn’t be happier. They’ve walked straight into the builds you saw above, the Robodog, the dual-arm setup, the Amazing Hand and the ATMOS Projects, which are top secret till the ATMOS marketing starts ;).

Browse the exact tasks they cracked: github.com/arc-bphc/2026-ARC-Induction#tasks

As ARC buckles up for The Most Active ATMOS yet, we expect even better performance from our juniors, and hopefully they shall deliver.

Member of the Month

Sathwik Reddy

This new inductee has done more work than some senior members, Sandboxx is like his hostel, and he only goes to Valmiki to sleep. Fixing those Ender 3D printers needs a lot of tinkering and patience, great work, keep it up!

See you after ATMOS.

— The ARC Team