Bringing together various skills from different engineering fields, robotics is no longer a thing of the future. In fact, robotics is now being used to enable practical learning of engineering concepts. Long-touted as a theory-based system of learning, Indian education stands to benefit through the efforts of Jay Robotix, a Hyderabad-based robotics firm that has been training school and college-level students.
Sudhir Reddy is the Founder and Director of Jay Robotix, a firm that offers certified training modules to schools and institutes to set up a robotics lab in their premises to bring in the practical aspects of science, maths and technology. “We are trying to make engineering students industry-ready by equipping them to apply new ideas and concepts with robotics education. While they may or may not take up robotics as a core area of interest in future, they will surely understand their textbooks better with our intervention. So far, we have trained over 11,000 engineering students and have tied up with several colleges,” says Sudhir.
Jay Robotics has established an Advanced Robotics Centre of Excellence to enable greater industry-academia interaction. Under this system, recruiters from the industry will have access to a talent pool of certified industry-ready engineers, which will minimise recruitment and training efforts. “The innovative programmes we conduct are modular in nature, can be integrated with the current semester system and involves working on a live project in the final-year, instead of picking one right off the shelf, as many do,” says Sudhir. He says that students get confidence when they convert their ideas into working products in the seventh and eighth semesters. Two universities in Hyderabad and Indian Institute of Science and Technology, Indore, have signed on for their services.
“Robots are not toys anymore. Concepts like electronics and programming can be taught practically. We also have an intervention programme called Robox in schools where students can be guided to pick the stream (in college) they are best suited to and have an interest in. We are expanding to Pune as well,” says the 29-year-old. Sudhir attended SASTRA University, Thanjavur, to pursue mechatronics in 2002, which he believes helped him gain through the multidisciplinary mode of learning.
Sudhir finished his master’s in robotics from Florida University, USA, in 2010 and came back to launch Jay Robotix in 2010. He is pursuing his PhD from the University PhD in computational sciences. He is now focused on setting up Centres of Excellence in 200 universities in India in the next few years. Structured to introduce students to embedded systems, robotics and computation concepts, Sudhir believes that this practical learning system will change the quality of our engineers. More at www.jayrobotix.co.in.
preethi@newindianexpress.com