Robots invade Kohima; students have a taste of AI

Our Correspondent

Kohima, Feb. 1 (EMN): When most schools in the city are still in a winter break mood, Stella Higher Secondary School (SHSS), Kohima was busy trying to keep its students abreast of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that has revolutionised the world.

A weeklong training on planning, learning, and problem-solving through machines was conducted at the school’s Atal Tinkering Lab (ATL) and it ended with a ‘robotic competition’ held on Feb. 1. The programme was organised with an aim to help students ‘catch up with the rest of the world’ in the field of AI.

It may be mentioned that the ATL was initiated by NITI Aayog to foster creative minds of the young people across the country. SHSS is the first institution in Kohima to receive ATL grand from NITI Aayog in 2018.

Altogether, three science teachers and 15 students of class VII to X participated at the competition, with four to six members each in a group. The three teams competed for ‘pick and place,’ where each team had to pick up a number of boxes, as much as possible, within a time frame. Team-2 emerged as the winner of the ‘robotic competition 2019’ after passing four rounds.

Abemo Humtsoe and Ngvüo Kemp from Team-3 shared their first time experience of the learning machines. For them, the training programme was “fun” and “very interesting.” “We get to learn many new things,” they said. Kemp of class X, who wished to become a robotic professor in the future, said: “I was lucky enough to have been trained and been a part of the programme.”

The training was conducted in collaboration with Noida-based RoboSpecies technologies Pvt. Ltd., a vendor that supplies equipments, trainings, and technical support to students.

Administrator of the RoboSpecies, Anurag Tiwari was one of the main trainers of the programme. He said that learning robotics is “very easy” and that it is “like a language you need to communicate with machines.” ‘It’s all about how we think, and converting those thoughts and ideas into reality by solving small problems,’ he added.

When asked about the response of the students, he pointed out that the students were a “bit shy” and “non-responsive” at first. However, after becoming familiar with them over time, students started to “really understand things and got easily adaptable” to the innovative ideas, he added.

Tiwari felt that students should not be “stuck” but apply their minds to solve ‘small problems’ in day-to-day life. ‘We are ready to provide services to the students whenever required,’ he said.

Administrator of SHSS, Thejavino Moa said that the competition was ‘just a warm up’ and more such competitions will be conducted in future. She was hopeful that the training would benefit the students, particularly those who are not ‘very good in academics.’ From the ideas to implementation; and equipments starting from the scratch were developed by the students during the training period, she added.

“It’s time we catch up with the rest of the world; we can’t be laid-back anymore,” Moa said.