The teacher develops a robot that speaks nine local languages and 38 foreign languages in India. Dinesh Patel, a computer science teacher at IIT Bombay Kendriya Vidyalaya, built a robot called ‘Shalu’. Shalu, a humanoid robot prototype, was developed using waste materials such as cardboard, copy covers, newspapers, thermocols, plastic boxes, aluminum wires and sheets.
Patel told Mid-Day, “The face is made of plaster of Paris. My main focus was on its programming. It took three years to develop and spend Rs 50,000.” “He recognizes people and things. He can do some human activities such as shaking hands. He can express feelings of joy, anger and excitement and a smile,” Patel said.
Like the robot ‘Sophia’ developed in Hong Kong, Shalu can talk on many topics. “She can also be used as a teacher in the classroom. She can ask students questions and answer their questions. She will tell you the latest news, horoscope and weather updates.
Shalu speaks Hindi, Bhojpuri, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Nepali and foreign languages including Japanese and French. According to Patel, he was thinking of building chit-chat robots to solve our problems, like Rajinikanth’s robot. He told Mid-Day that when he saw the robot ‘Sophia’, he ensured that it was possible and working for it.
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