Fun with robots

Schoolchildren apply their scientific temperament to build robots at workshop held by a private company

Fancy for robots is not extended to films alone. Schoolgoing kids tried their hand in building robots in a workshop organised by Thinklabs, a private company involved in spread of robotic science.

Thinklabs conducted a camp over the weekend to give a chance to school going students to explore their creativity, talent and imagination to build robots. The robot workshop had children illustrating the concept of robot coding so that they can create the most unbelievable variety of robots on their own. On display were variety of concepts including scorpion, thrower, remote-controlled car, gripper and kicker.

The workshop also had a sumo-wrestling competition between groups consisting of students and their robots. The winner of this workshop would enter the National Robotics Competition ufffdTRICKS to be held at IIT-Bombay later this month. The champion will also have a rare opportunity of a trip to NASA.

"These students are very talented, keen and quick learners. They have a very bright scientific future ahead," said Mohammad Badar, a robotics trainer.

The entire camp was divided into three levels: Robocamp Junior (standard IV to VI), Robocamp Virtu (IV to VI) and Robocamp Senior (VII to XII standard).

According to their area of interest, the students were given knowledge on basics of mechanics and its importance in robot building, introduction to electricity and magnetism, programming on scratch developed by MIT, advanced concepts of physics such as torque, speed and friction.

"Concept and programming matrices of robots are complex concepts to be understood by the students of junior school. But the enthusiasm and efforts they are putting in the work is a delight to watch," said Badar.

He also said that all the students programmed and made robots on their own and that he didn't contribute much.

Saurav Tadke, a standard eight student of St. Joseph school said, "Robots have always fascinated me and now I want to learn hard-core robot designing." His proud mother said, "He made a car by bending and joining roller-skates and is now planning to attach motors to it so that it can be remote-controlled."