Chennai boy develops an app to control robots, awarded by President

Chennai: S. Arjun, a class 9 student from Velammal Vidhyashram, Surapet, in the city, who launched his technology company ‘LateraLogics’, received the national child award for exceptional achievement from President Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi recently.

He is now focussed on developing a new mobile application, ‘iRobots’, to control robots from a cell phone.

The 14-year-old inventor and one of the youngest CEOs in the country says that the iRobot mobile application can be used with the Lego Mindstorm kit to control the robot without any need for a computer programme, making it easier for people to use it on the similar lines of plug-and-play model.

“The app communicates with the robot using the mobile phone’s bluetooth and can also be controlled through SMS. I am now working on this android app which will be available from this week,” he said.

Elated by the response he has received for his ‘Ez School Bus Locator’ app that won the MIT’s app inventor award in 2012, Arjun started his company two years ago to develop more such apps. “My aim is to make my company bigger than Google, which I am certain I will be able to do,” a confident Arjun said.

Arjun’s equally elated father, Mr Santhosh Kumar, says that his son received the award from the President for exceptional achievement in computer technology. “He is one of the 20 children who received the award on Children’s Day. I am proud that my son received an award from the country’s President,” he said.