Inspiration
Mumbai Teacher Builds 1st Humanoid Robot That Speaks 9 Indian Languages
This computer science teacher from Mumbai has built a humanoid robot after getting inspired by the ‘Chitti’ character that Rajnikant played in one of his blockbuster films.
Dinesh Patel is a Computer Science teacher at a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Mumbai. He recently developed India’s first 9-language-speaking humanoid robot that’s named ‘Shalu.’ Patel was inspired by ‘Chitti,’ the advanced robot played by film superstar Rajnikant in the movie ‘Robot.’ He apparently also read about the Hong Kong-based robot ‘Sophia,’ which was developed by Hanson Robotics, to take a cue.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream mission Digital India Mission and Make in India Mission, too, gave him the motivation to start developing ‘Shalu.’
Patel’s biggest issue was, however, to arrange the devices needed to make the robot. After a lot of dilemmas, he finally decided to go for locally available motors, circuits, plastic, aluminium, cardboard, wood, etc.
The humanoid robot developed by him can speak 9 Indian languages and 38 foreign languages, it can express and recognise human emotions as well. The robot is capable of remembering people and converse with them based on predefined content. Best of all, it can be used as a teaching assistant in classrooms as it can answer queries, solve math problems, and teach subjects like general knowledge, history, geography, physics, chemistry and more.
Patel now wishes to go ahead with his innovation like printing better body parts of the robot with 3D printers and using latex for the face so the emotions it exhibits get closer to that of human’s.
Certainly, educators like Dinesh Patel are evolving the teaching field multi-folds. They are the pride and honour of the nation!