Low-cost robotic arm by Indian teen | Fusion - WeRIndia

A 17 year old teenager of Indian origin has won accolades for making a low-cost robotic arm.

He made as part of his school science fair project in California, USA. The name of the teenager is Nilay Mehta.

He received an award called blue ribbon award. It is an accolade which recognizes a student’s academic excellence in US schools.

The project he started has qualified for the Orange Country Science Engineering Fair. Here he won four first place awards. Nilay is a student of Irvine Public School in California.

For his robotic arm project, he worked for over four months to build and program it and replicate the movements of a human hand.

Nilay said that he was unsure about the direction he should take for the project even though he wanted to do something related to prosthetics. After noticing that there were no low cost options for this, he decided to make it.

Typical high end prosthetic arms cost around $35,000. However, Nilay’s creation can be purchased for just $260. The robotic arm is operated by voice command.

The user can speak into a small microphone on the arm which can be used to perform various hand movements like “pinch” and “grab”.

Image Reference: Gizbot