It is fascinating to see 3D printed robots called humanoids, functioning like humans. A young, grade 12 student of Green Valley Educational Institute is making an attempt to develop a humanoid robot which can function as real human beings do, to ease out the work in various institutions.
Aqid Farooq Shah, a young innovator, has been working on making a fully functional humanoid for the past two years. He said it was 60 percent complete and the testing has also been successful.
According to Aqid, He was driven to the idea of making the humanoid during the time of covid pandemic.
“Many Health workers got infected with covid 19 while reaching out to patients to provide them food and medicine. In such demanding circumstances a robot could have been of immense help. Apart from that, the robots can even monitor the patients. The utility of humanoids is vast,” he said.
From hospitals to households, humanoid robots can be used to serve a number of tasks. “In many places of India, there are restaurants where robots act as servers,” he added.
He said that the only hindrance is that society should be able to accept robots working in public spaces.
“We can code it as per the requirement of the environment. My robot has a human face and a silicon covering and can be used to give it the resemblance of the skin of a person,” he added.
Currently, Aqid is working on the lower portion of the robot. “It’s a time-consuming project. As far as the appearance and results are concerned, till now I am getting a positive response,” he said.
He has showcased the robot in one of the competitions organized by National Institute of Technology, Srinagar and secured the first position. Also, he said that he has displayed the innovation to Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Manoj Sinha, director of India’s Atal Innovation Mission, Chintan Vaishnav and many officials.
Simultaneously, he is working on other projects as well.
To avoid the encroachment of the water bodies, he is working on a drone. The drone is equipped with sensors and thermal camera allowing it to function during night time.
“The drone will do the surveillance which can monitor the encroachment and the data will be given to the municipal authorities. The prototype has been presented before government authorities and they have appreciated it,” he said.
He is making the robot in the Atal Tinkering lab of his school with the help of the facilities provided in the lab.
“The lab in my school helps me a lot and gives me exposure to many things. In future I want to have a robotics company where people can develop their robots,” he said.
Besides these, he has also made a boat to clean the Dal Lake and a solar tracker device which tracks the position of the sun to absorb the maximum sunlight.
He has also made a landslide detector to reduce the fatalities and crashes caused due to landslides caused in several parts of the country.
“Landslide is one of the biggest natural disasters. We often come across news about deaths and devastation due to landslides. The landslide detector is based on IOT and the nearby areas would get the notification on the mobile application to alert the people about the landslide,” he explained.
Since childhood, he has been curious to know about appliances and gadgets. Breaking things to build was something he would love to do.
“Being a student, it gets really hard to afford the equipment for the innovations. There are many ideas which one can work on but the platforms for the innovators to show their work are still less,” he said.
He further said that the youth were interested in robotics but Kashmir still lacks the robotics branch in various engineering colleges.
“The reason is the robots made by the innovators end up in a garbage bin because the colleges don’t offer robotics courses here. In India there are a good number of colleges offering robotics courses but why can’t we have one here,” he said.
