Ten-year-old Balagurukugan found out the contact number of a robotics company and called up the founder for details about their kits for children — all by himself. This came as a surprise to his parents, who didn’t even know he was interested in robotics.
“Earlier I used to make robots with paper and cardboard and dismantled my electronic toys to understand them. But after making basic-level robots with motors, I have understood the mechanism of such gadgets,” says the Std V student.
He is among many children who have fallen in love with these machines after watching movies such as
Balaji Lakshmanan, the brain behind the 6-foot humanoid robot in
The 29-year-old CEO of imakerobots.com designs kits for children and has trained nearly 4,000 students at the school and college level. “Robotics can change the way children think, and enables them to be more creative. The right time to start is when they are young,” he says.
Vibhu Ravindran, for example, was just five when his father introduced him to robotics. “Initially, the idea was to have fun with the kit. But in course of time, he understood the basic functioning of gears and locomotion,” says the father, B. Ravindran, who teaches and runs a robotics lab at IIT-Madras. “I explored every part of the robot, and when I got stuck, I asked my father,” says Vibhu, now nine.
Taiwan-based Gestream Technology manufactures the smallest humanoid robot in the world — the BeRobot, which can be assembled by children.
Its founder, Sean Chang says, “Many of the assembling components are small. We suggest that children who are nine years and above use the robot kits, but with the help of trained teachers or parents. Even kindergarten children can be introduced to basic robotics.”
In fact, several Indian schools are now incorporating robotics into the curriculum and training teachers for it. At The Velammal International School in Chennai, 30 children trained under a robotics expert and were soon on their way to making their own models.
“This year, we bought our own kits and set up a robotics lab. As this is a residential school, students can visit the lab at any time,” says Veeravel Murugan, Executive Director of the school. The children are also doing well in competitions. “They won the Indian Robot Olympiad junior high category, and represented India at the World Robot Olympiad 2012 in Malaysia,” he says.
Mumbai-based ThinkLABS has partnered with about 200 schools, both within the country and abroad, through its robotics education platform called RoboLab. CEO and founder Gaggan Goyal says, “By building and programming robots, students explore fundamentals of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and computer programming. This programme comprises hardware, software, curriculum content and, most importantly, a teachers’ training programme.”
Robotics may really be the next big thing, just as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has predicted: “The emergence of the robotics industry is developing in much the same way that the computer business did 30 years ago”.
So, it may be no exaggeration to say that the children who enter this field today would be the ones leading the country in the future.