AK Joshi students shine bright at international science contest bag bronze

25 August, 2018

Thane : Four students from Thane's AK Joshi School have made the city as well as the country proud by bagging the bronze medal at the recently held science exhibition in China. From among 40 budding science enthusiasts across the world, this team of young scientists won accolades in the international category of China Adolescents Science and Technology Innovation Contest (CASTIC). The 14-year-olds — Anurag Shetye, Siddharth Vernekar, Shriya Danekar and Divya Kadrekar spent a lot of effort and energy in completing their projects and presenting them to the final leg of the global event.

While the boys prepared a prototype robot to help locate human beings trapped under debris after natural calamities, the girls devised a vehicle pollution detection and control system similar to the already existing Pollution Under Control (PUC) model in India.

On asking what inspired the boys to take up a topic so unique they said, "During the massive earthquake that shattered Nepal to its very core in 2015, a person was trapped for almost 25 hours as the rescue officials weren't able to locate him. In such a crisis situation where it becomes tough to search for people, we thought of developing something called as a rescue robot i.e. R-robot in short. We have equipped the robot with cameras and infrared sensors which can pick up the rays released by humans. It will then give an alarm even at the slightest of body movement with the help of LED lights," said Shetye who aspires to become a software programming engineer.

Although currently fixated on a self-made moving car for facilitating a higher level detection and tracing of humans, the class IX students said they are planning to control the operation using a drone device.

After months of hard-work, research and analysis, the girls were instrumental in transforming their ideas and concepts into reality. Speaking about their project, Kadrekar said, "Our model is similar to PUC system. We have devised a model that comprises of sensors that will help detect pollutants emitted from vehicles which can be installed at petrol pumps. Through global system for mobile (GSM) technology the owner of the vehicle as well as the authorities will get an alert about their vehicular pollution levels. If the levels are more they could be fined but if it's less, incentives could also be given. The entire database can be later stored on a software for effective monitoring."

This is the 12th time that students from this school have been awarded for their innovation at CASTIC.

R-robot is equipped with cameras, infrared sensors which can pick up rays released by humans. During crisis, it will raise an alarm even at the slightest of body movement with the help of LED lights

 

Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com