“What would you like your robot to do?” asked Ranjani Saigal as she kicked off the Ekal Vidyalaya Robotics Boot Camp at Tufts University last Saturday. The enthusiastic participants had all sorts of fun ideas, from a donut and cookie building bot, to bots helping with homework!

The Ekal Robotics Camp was the brainchild of Ekal Youth Leader Akash Kumar, a high school student from Shrewsbury. With a passion for robotics, Akash has been competing at the FLL (First Lego League) for past several years. When he came with a proposal to run a robotics boot camp, the Ekal New England team was eager to support him. Akash worked diligently to prepare for this one day camp. The boot camp involved learning the Lego Mindstorm Software, building the robots with EV3 kits and running the programs - live! Akash was well supported by his younger brother, Abhishek, who went around the class and helped individuals.

Participants included elementary and middle school kids. Of course some curious adults had also registered for the event! In the first session, Akash started with an overview of robotics, the EV3 kit, and a deep dive into programming with Mindstorm. By noon, kids were ready to try their program on the live-bot! It was really exciting to see the thrill and joy on their faces, to see their work in action as the bot moved on the mat. With a feedback from the coach, they would go back and make changes to their program and try more refinements.

The post-lunch session started with a short video on Ekal Vidyalaya and continued with Ranjani Saigal’s inspirational words. Ekal Vidyalaya is now running over 70,000 schools in rural and remote India. Following her talk, she led a Q&A, where both kids and parents asked thoughtful questions about the structure of Ekal. They showed a great appreciation for the cause and wanted to learn more. Veteran Youth Leader, Nandini Seetharaman, shared her experience from her recent Ekal internship in Jharkhand, India.

Akash resumed the boot camp and ignited the interest with a bot-building exercise. In groups of three, the children worked with EV3 kits to build their own bots. The Ekal team is grateful to Prof. Anil Saigal and Tufts University for arranging the EV3 kits for this hands-on experience. It made all the difference. Akash then explained the classic case of ‘Line Follower’ and worked on the code with the participants. The bots started to cover the edges of the mat and turn around the periphery of circular shapes. Excitement filled the room, not just with the kids but also with parents who decided to stick around. Now they were ready to run the program with their own bot! Kids were soon making changes and trying different controls for motor rotations, turns, and sensors. At the end of the day, the bots were joyfully dis-assembled and packed. One of the parent mentioned that the participants learned more than what a 5-day FLL camp would cover and that too with real hands on experience.

The camp was a huge success, the funds raised will help run Ekal schools in rural India. Akash and Abhishek did a brilliant job with the boot camp. Many thanks to their parents, Kumar and Veena, for keeping them on track and to the Ekal NE team, Latha Krishnan, Nandini Seetharaman, Ranjani Saigal, Nikita Minocha, Madhu Mathur Anand, Deepti Bhargava, Anu Upneja, Parveen Minocha, Anil Saigal, and Nisha John for supporting this event.

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