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| Dinesh Patel with his Humanoid Robot Shalu |
Brainchild of IIT Bombay's Kendriya Vidyalaya computer science teacher, Dinesh Patel, the Shalu humanoid robot prototype holds many distinctions.
While it does look like a cheap imitation of the Sophia robot, looks can be deceiving and the story behind the effort is one of several years of hardwork and Indian ingenuity.
Shalu humanoid robot prototype
According to its creator, Shalu humanoid robot is the only such Indian robot to be made 100% from waste material, utilizing discarded plastic, cardboard, wood and aluminium parts, as per Dinesh Patel. After 3 years of dedication and hard work, Dinesh was able to build the prototype for the humanoid robot ”Shalu”.“Shalu” isa lovely soft-spoken, multi-talented, multi-lingual Robot “Shalu”. She is capable of speaking 9 Indian languages (Hindi, Bhojpuri, Marathi, Bangla, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Nepali) in addition to English along with 38 foreign languages viz. German, Japanese, etc.
What Shalu can do?
Shalu has been developed as a humanoid robot, which means that it can mimic human behaviour and has a diverse set of capabilities which enables it to respond in the same manner as a human being. She can demonstrate human behaviour and gestures viz. shaking hands, laughing, anger, and irritation. The key capabilities of the Humanoid Robot “Shalu” include Facial Recognition using which “Shalu” can remember a person after meeting them, just like a normal human being. On similar lines, she can also identify common objects such as a computer, laptop, TV, mobile, bottle, book, bus, watches, chair, etc. Dinesh has also programmed a set of smart capabilities in “Shalu” making her an ideal companion. “Shalu” can read news from newspapers, read horoscopes based on an individual’s date of birth, and also predict or forecast weather for the next 10 days for any location! She can also tell jokes to keep people entertained and also have a social casual talk on predefined contents using Artificial Intelligence by understanding the meaning of the conversation.
Shalu as Learning Companion..
Being a teacher, Dinesh has imbibed several qualities of a teacher in the Robot “Shalu”, making her an ideal Learning companion for students. She is capable of understanding simple math questions as well as equations and answers such as Time-Speed-Distance, Simple/Compound Interest, equation calculation, LCM/GCF, Factors, Prime numbers, Armstrong numbers, etc.“Shalu” is also capable of giving lectures and presentations in the classroom or seminars and is capable of answering educational questions based on Physics, Chemistry, Maths, History, Geography, GK, etc. which usually students ask while studying in the classroom.
The Way Ahead....
On asking what plans he has for Shalu’s future, Dinesh says that he is just getting started and plans on adding more capabilities and functionalities to the humanoid robot soon. As far as future plans are concerned, to help “Shalu” exhibit human emotions better, he plans on using 3D print body parts for smooth movement of different body parts with better quality motors. He will also use real latex human face mask to express their emotions with facial expression while also improving on the social conversation skills and capability to answer educational queries in many languages perfectly.
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