5 days ago
- Science
- New Indian Express
Teen scientists' humanoid ELSA to guide you rightly
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: What if robots could teach students or walk amid them as their understanding peers? This thought once felt like a distant dream. The students of Saraswathi Vidyalaya in Thiruvananthapuram have developed an AI-powered humanoid, that can navigate students in the school and even teach them. Named after a Disney character, ELSA was launched by music director M Jayachandran at the school on Saturday.
The 4.5-ft-tall humanoid was the result of the hardwork of eight scientifically-spirited students—Vaibhav M, Krishnanunni Vidhu, Karthik Nair, Rishinath P R, Anamika Visakh, Narayani Sandeep, Avani Anand Kurup, and Arathi S P.
The teenagers, who worked overtime after their academics, collaborated with Kollam-based Techosa Robotics to build ELSA.
'We just helped the students when they hit roadblocks. All the work, from ideation to execution, was done by them,' Techosa Robotics CEO Sam H Sivan said, adding that the humanoid could be the first of its kind to be developed by students from Kerala.
All textbook contents have been fed into ELSA. The humanoid can now teach students any content from the syllabus, and even direct a visitor to the school to the right place or person as per their needs.
'The first plan was to build a humanoid, which will revolutionise the teaching process,' said Vaibhav from Class 9, who mostly handled the Python programming part of ELSA.
He further said that their elaborate plans were later refined to the current one due to various challenges. However, the young scientist said that the humanoid can never replace their beloved teachers.
'Even our teachers find it difficult to handle students in class sometimes. So do I need to say how a robot fares?' Vaibhav smiled.
Karthik from Plus-One, who oversaw the mechanical part of the humanoid, said that everything, including component assembling for the humanoid, was done by the students. The entire process took the students less than a year to complete.
Currently exhibited in the Robotics Lab of the school, ELSA, which has tyres attached to it for free movement, can be deployed to attend to visitors for big events like inter-school programmes, a teacher at the school said.
The school is also considering age-appropriate content regulation at the next stage of the humanoid. Any additions to this can be done by a few changes in the programming, explained the teen scientists.
