AHMEDABAD: A project has caught the fancy of students at Gandhinagar International Public School (GIPS) these days. GridBot Technical Pvt Ltd – a project incubated by Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) of IIM-A – is the brain behind this initiative meant to spread awareness about the robotics in the state.

“When we started off in 2007, we had no manpower having understanding of robotics as a science. Even today, there is a dearth of men with vision. We then came up with an idea of Robolab, an experience that has nothing to do with a person’s level of education. It engages both a 10-year-old and an engineer. We then started contacting the schools for such a laboratory and the first lab was started in Gandhinagar,” said Pulkit Gaur, chief technical officer of Gridbots.

Victor Christi, principal of GIPS, told TOI that at the moment 50 enrollments have come for the lab. “The response is phenomenal. The motive is to give hands-on experience of science to students. While we can explain laws of gravity and motions in classroom, learning is fun when principles are applied in practice,” he said.

According to Gaur, students learn science quickly and go on to experiment, coming up with unique ideas. “The sessions taken up by our engineers are 30 per cent theory and 70 per cent practical. We have got projects like a mobile battery charger that works on the motor used in robotics. One of them has a robot walking like human controlled by a mobile phone,” said Gaur.

Kunal Upadhyay, CEO of CIIE, IIM-A, told TOI that robotics science has tremendous scope. “A robot can clean up a water tank where humans can go,” he said. Other schools are also warming up to the idea. According to Gaur, eight schools in Gujarat have shown interest in this project.

Read more: The Times of India