Students from the Atal Tinkering Lab at Puthiyakavu and Thalassery Amrita Vidyalayam schools presented their research results at the Fablearn Asia 2020, an International Symposium held on January 10-12, at the King Mongkut’s University in Bangkok, Thailand.
Students from IX standard have designed an eco-friendly biodegradable tensegrity solution for safely airdropping fragile medical supplies using unmanned aerial vehicles. Sanjula Sreekumar, Madhumati Anand, and Vyshak Ajith presented their research paper titled “Taking off with Biodegradable Tensegrities: An Eco-friendly Emergency Medical Delivery Solution” at a student panel session during the conference.
They presented their journey in making and learning from projects including creating a floor cleaning robot inspired by Wall-E, air dropping emergency medical supplies for disaster situation using drones and tensegrities.
Madhumati Anand quotes, “Because of Atal Tinkering Labs, we had a chance to be part of a student aero-club and disaster preparedness club in our school. In these clubs, our Atal mentors from AMMACHI labs are teaching us how to make our own drones and innovate using drones for humanitarian applications such as providing emergency medical relief during disasters like the Kerala floods that we witnessed in 2018.”
The youngest student, Thejus Shyamlal from the fifth standard has created over ten innovations in the last two years, all the while experimenting with different materials and form sizes for different societal applications. He presented his research paper titled “My experiences with making Electronics and Steam Boats, Lego robots and a Helper Robot” captured his journey in making and tinkering and the lessons he has learned from it.
Ninth standard students Goutham Mohanraj and Ashok Kumar from Thalasseri Amrita Vidyalayam presented their paper on neuro-exo-heal which helps in the treatment of stroke patients. This can be accomplished either through traditionally assisted physiotherapy or by using new technologies in rehabilitation centers. They designed Neuro-Exoheal as an innovative solution to assist in the rehabilitation of hand stroke and hand paralysis.
Our observations from trials with patients wearing the device for an extended period of time include an improvement in the movement of fingers suggesting the generation of useful neuroplasticity. Hence we assert that providing assistive forces inherently helps to counteract the muscle weakness,” said the young researchers.
The research drew praise from the judging panel for its innovative character. Although over 150 children from all over the world participated in Fablearn Asia 2020, ours were the only children from India to attend the conference. The students are proud to represent India in their panel sessions.
Last year, Goutham Mohanraj and Ashok Kumar won first prize and the trio from Puthiyakavu, Amrita Vidyalayam won second prize in the National Science Olympiad which was held at Amrita Viswa Vidyapeetham, Ettimadai. The conference organizers were highly impressed by the student’s work and have provided a complete waiver on registration fees for the students. Besides getting an opportunity to network with and listen to talks by eminent international faculty, the students will also have a chance to attend hands-on workshops conducted by international experts during the conference.
The presentations by Amrita students attracted recognition from the international scientific community as well
