Meet 11-year-olds from the city who can make their own robots and do the programming too!

What do kids do when they get bored of their toys? Buy new ones, right? Wrong! Srijan Gupta and Aditya Puranik model out their own. A black-line tracer becomes a ball picker, a robot meant to travel on a smooth surface transforms into tough-terrain robot and in this case tools take the shape of a robot that can hit three cans placed in three different directions with utmost ease. A robot, the mechanics of which has made them the only team from Chandigarh to succeed at the India Robot Olympiad ‘08 and be invited to the World Robot Olympiad ‘08, which will be held at Yokohama, Japan.

“Assigned as a part of our project in St John’s High School, our mentor Parminder Malik helped us create it,” smiles Srijan, as he shows us the programming techniques on the laptop and tells us that their team won the runner-up prize in the primary school category. Made with LEGO Mindstorms kit, “this has touch and light sensors, sound sensor and ultrasonic sensor,” Aditya tells us that from deciding the number of motors required for the robot to connecting the input and output devices, they have done it all. “The 32-bit command center is used in a manner to give maximum utility,” they chorus displaying the use of drag-and-drop interface and configuring the objects.

The robot took the boys about two months to reach its final completion. “We did not sleep for many nights,” say these engineers in the making, as they talk about the about 32 options they had thought of and created. “After conceptualization, we took into consideration all the terrains that it can go on and the constraints,” says Aditya, as he astonishes all with his calculations and reasoning. But for them, it’s just about having fun. “While last year we only participated in the World Robot Olympiad held in Taiwan, this year we will win it too.” Whoever said youngsters these days are uselessly whiling away time on gaming and computers, needs to meet them!