MakersLoft, a niche player in Robotics and STEM learning at Kolkata, is the place where I have learnt, got involved in various initiatives during my secondary school. This activity school encourages in STEM programs like Robotics, Creative Building, Coding, Web Designing, App Designing etc.
Food Matters; it was the theme of India National Championship of World Robot Olympiad (WRO), 2018 that took place in Ahmedabad. WRO is hosted by STEM Foundation who encourages students across cities in India to get interest into Robotics which in tern helps inculcating creativity, design and problem solving skills. More than 1000 students innovators in age group of 6 to 25 years, participated in this event from all parts of India on 15th and 16th September in 2018.
Competition happened in 2 categories, Regular and Open. While in Regular category, problems are given and participants need to show a Robotic solution, I participated in the Open category where problem statement itself to be researched and finalized by participants. For the theme ‘Food Matters’, I researched and along with my MakersLoft guide and friends went to multiple food industries in West Bengal having different production floors making potato chips, pickles, fast foods etc. We experienced how the actual industry operates, challenges faced with respect to people and process and so on. After working for a few months on this theme to combat food wastage in the state of West Bengal, we built a working prototype of an automated cold storage facility named ‘Dahlania Cold Storage’. Our solution helps identification, automatic replacement of potato sacks in different heights in this cold storage. Our Robotic solution would help company to prevent inventory wastage, cost benefit and it also helps reduce health hazard of carrying a load of potato to a height in very low temperature. It was an engrossing discussion and explaining about working robotic model of envisioned automated Dahlania Cold Storage facility to judges, industry experts, students and anyone who came to our stall in Ahmedabad. We stood second in this National round of WRO. I also learnt and enjoyed seeing interesting Robots created by different other participating groups in that event; Gardening by Robot, Robot football league are a few ones to mention.
This was my profile which I submitted for this event.
“A student of St. Xaviers Collegiate School, Kolkata, Souradeep has many diverse interests. While Mathematics is on the top of that list, Robotics comes a close second. He also loves solving puzzle cubes, practicing his chess moves, painting with water colours and going for horse riding on weekends. And in his free time he tries to search for the answers of the mysteries like gene mutation and aftermath of big bang! His favourite footballer is Leo Messi, favourite singer Shawn Mendes, and he is undecided who is the best between J K Rowling and Dan Brown. He loves his holidays and treasures the memories of his visits to Sangla Valley in Himachal and Rome in Italy. And as per him there is nothing like butter chicken when it’s about food! He is a 13 year old student of class 8.”