BY PRATIMA ACHREKAR
“Scientists investigate that which already is; engineers create that which has never been,” so goes a famous quote by Albert Einstein. With technology growing by leaps and bounds, man has been able to control numerous things to make our lives smoother, faster and easier.

This luxurious lifestyle has been possible only because of an engineer’s perseverance in introducing valuable gadgets.
As technology steps ahead, budding masterminds struggle to carve a niche for themselves. Attaining a position in this competitive world is very complex, and innovative ideas always play a vital role in building an edge.
‘The Navhind Times’ caught up with ‘4 Idiots’ from the Goa College of Engineering, Farmagudi-Ponda - Upesh Prabhu, Pranav Pai Vernekar, Vaibhav Sathe, Amol Khanolkar 
The four have invented an Internet controlled robot. Internet and robotics are one of the fastest growing and most researched fields in technology today. So they decided to bring the two together to create a revolutionary technology. The idea was to have a robot that could be controlled from any part of the world using the Internet. This can find applications in various fields such as medicine, defense, transportation, etc.
“Today people prefer to use wireless technology. Hence, it was very important to create a wireless robot. We achieved this by using wireless transmission protocol XigBee. The Xigbee has a range of about 100 meters. For a higher range we can also use WiFi or WiMax,” the four explain.
The technology has various applications like tele-medicine - many a time the doctor may not be at the place of the emergency. In such cases this technology would be of great use. A robot could be used to operate on the patient, which can be controlled from any part of the world by the doctor. The doctors could wear a mimicking glove and the robot would pick up the signal and mimic the movement at the place where the patient is located. A feedback of various parameters like temperature, blood pressure, heart rate can be sent to the doctor via camera.
It could also be useful in urban warfare - we know when the terrorists attacked Mumbai on 26/11 the NSG commandos took a long time to reach the place. Instead we could have robots placed at all the major cities in India, controlled using our technology by experts situated at a centralised command station, these youth enthusiastically reveal. The robots will be armed with ammunitions and will give video and other feedback to the command station. The robots will not be autonomous but will be controlled by humans so the problem of robots going out of control is not there. This will help us to fight terror in a much more effective way and also save lives.
In the case of shopping, they add, online marketing doesn’t allow customer to get live feed of the object he/she is going to buy. Instead, a profile picture of the object is shown to him. Using this system we can transform the whole scenario of online shopping. Live feeds of the objects can be provided. This will enable the customers to check for freshness of vegetables.
The boys inform that at present this technology is used in countries like Japan where research is still on. Amol Khanolkar worked on the PHP and C# coding; he is also an expert in web designing. Vaibhav Sathe did the coding of the robot. Upesh D Prabhu and Pranav Pai Vernekar worked in making the robot hardware. They are grateful to Mr Samarth Borkar, faculty of ETC Department, GEC for providing them with guidance throughout this project.
Achievements and Recognition in various competitions on robotics
• First place at competition “Robotics for betterment of human life” by Goa Science Centre.
• First Place at National Level Paper presentation competition at TechnoSangram 2010 by ASSETS.
• First Place at Sparks 2K10 by Electra.
• Were invited by Goa Science Centre to demonstrate our technology to the general public during the Science Fiesta on February 25, 2010 organized on the occasion of Science Day celebration.