THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Four young brains from the DCS Robotics Academy, Aluva, are leaving for China on Tuesday to attend the prestigious RoboRave Asia 2017, the International Robotics Competition for school students to be held on February 9 and 10 at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing.
Junaid Muhammed, Adithya S Thacherii, Goureeshankar Shyoson and Rohith Murugan - all students in standard eight - comprise the middle school team for the international contest representing India. The four-member team was selected after they emerged winners of RoboRave nationals held in Choice School, Kochi last year.
While Junaid is from Jeevass CMI Central School, Aluva, the other three - Adithya, Goureeshankar and Rohith - are from Vidyodaya School, Thevakkal.
Fire Fighting, Line Following and the a-Maze challenge are the three categories in which they have won prizes. The four candidates are contesting as two teams for the RoboRave International. While one team will be participating in the Fire Fighting Challenge and the other will opt for Alpinebot Challenge.
Fire fighting is a task to design, build and program a robot that can identify four lit candles, approach and extinguish candles without touching them, whereas Alpinebot Challenge is to plan, construct and to program a robot to climb a 60 to 70 degree slanted plane to the flat surface on top to place a flag in the assigned position.
“The learning experience from DCS Robotics gave us this opportunity. None of us have experienced such big platforms before joining here. I’m extremely thrilled about this chance to be part of an international event representing our nation,” said Adithya.
“DCS Robotics is the learning ground of the kids to apply whatever they have learned from their schools. The robotics engineers here will train them by linking robotics with their school curriculum. The course is meant for school students from 5th to 10th grade. It is designed as three different levels with 32 classes for each levels,” said Varghese John, who heads DCS Robotics.
The students will be trained to design and build three-wheelers, and to program remote controlling robots, robot wrestling etc in the beginner level. They will enter the intermediate level where they will be making complex machines like robots sorting garbage, and shooting guns. And the third level comprises the making of conversing robots with facial expressions, a written test and a few other tests. DCS Robotics will have their new branch at Panampilly Nagar soon, said Varghese.