Indian students make water cleaning Robot | Fusion - WeRIndia

For the first time, the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Global Challenge has opened up to other countries, and India has participated with a seven-person team.

These seven were chosen out of one hundred applications from students in schools in Mumbai: Rahesh Saraf, Aadiv Shah, Harsh Bhatt, Vatsin Suchak, Adhyyan Sekhsaria, Tejas Ramdas, and Raghav Ringshia. Together, they took on the challenge of creating a robot that could separate pollutants from the water they contaminate.

Thus, the team designed a robot called Neutrino for the challenge, which would simulate a real-life scenario of a contaminated river.

In the match, there were fifty balls flowing in a stream: forty blue balls to represent clean water and ten orange balls to represent contaminated water.

Every team had to take the blue balls to the water reserve at the front of the arena and take the orange balls to the laboratory on a bridge at the back of the arena.

Points were awarded for every ball sent to the right location. In the challenge’s second phase, the arena was flooded with blue balls, and the robot had to get to safety by climbing either on the bridge or on the hanging bars around the arena.

The team analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of each member, and they divided their roles based on them. They performed well at the challenge, earning the gold medal for the Zhang Heng Engineering Design Award and the bronze medal for the Global Challenge Match.

Since their robot was only a simulation of real life, the team is also working to develop Neutrino so it can be used to solve the problem of contamination in water bodies around the globe.

With this international fame, they hope to create awareness back home of the importance of water conservation and water cleaning, which can help improve the thousands of water-deprived lives in India.

Image Reference: TheBetterIndia, TheLouisianaWeekly