Creativity from the young was in full display at the three-day World Robot Olympiad
Robots to collect biomedical waste, clean water bodies, clear thousands of tonnes of garbage from the site of Haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia and even a robotic E-bin from South Africa… students at the World Robot Olympiad had ideas aplenty on how to achieve a Swachh Bharat, the robotic, safe and non-hazardous way.
Amongst the participants at this year's edition, the first time India is hosting the event, was 13-year-old Navya, a Class IX student of St Joseph's in Mumbai, who remembers being appalled when she read about a nurse who had to pick up biomedical waste with her bare hands and contracted Hepatitis B. That prompted Navya and her two friends, Anshu, 10, and Soham, 13, to come up with the Nurse Assistant, a robot to do the job.
It took them six months of hard work. "We researched a lot before starting this project. We read lots of articles on how nurses in hospitals collect biomedical waste, which is really dangerous for their health. So we have come up with this robot, which will clean biomedical waste in a more efficient manner," she said.
Little wonder that their stall at the Olympiad -- being held at the India Expo Centre in Noida, with the theme 'Rap the Scrap' in line with the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan -- was a popular one with many visitors stopping by.
Caregivers like doctors, nurses and ward-boys in hospitals are multiple times more prone to catching infections as they are in close proximity with the sick and handle biomedical waste without requisite precautions. In Mumbai's Sewri TB Hospital, Asia's largest centre for treating TB, for instance, close to 200 caregivers have been infected with the disease. Of these, 40, including a senior doctor, have died.
"It is a very good idea to pick up biomedical waste with help of robots. This reduces human contact. It will reduce infections that can be caused due to pricks in healthy caregivers," said Dr Lalit Anande, senior medical officer at Sewri.
Amongst the thousands of students, from as young as nine to 25, from 51 countries was 11-year-old Krishna, a Class VII student from Manav Rachna School in Faridabad, who has created a robot that can clean small and large water bodies.
"Our robot is an autonomous vehicle that collects garbage from various water bodies, removing harmful algae near garbage patches to increase the level of oxygen. After collecting the garbage, it drops it in the recycling factory," he said.
From South Africa were Dilan, 12, and Aydin, 9, with the unique robot, E-bin. "The E-bin has a bar-code with three sections -- plastic, paper and metal-- and a barcode detector. When one has to throw something in the E-bin, one will bring it near the detector and the section where your waste is meant to be opens automatically," Dilan explained.
And then there was an all-girls team from Saudi Arabia, whose robot is called Haram, named after the mosque in the sacred Ka'bah. "Every year, around 14,000 tons of garbage is collected from the Haj site. There are no proper arrangement for its recycling in Saudi Arabia. So, we have made the Robo-Haram which will collect the trash from the site after every Haj and Umrah and process it for recycling," said 16-year-old Jasmine.
The three-day event, ending Sunday, was organised by the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM) in collaboration with India STEM Foundation (ISF).
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