Hyderabad school girl comes out with robotic pet

Hyderabad: As Revanth Reddy, Chief Minister of Telangana, hands over a cheque of Rs 2 lakh to the kin of Swiggy boy who died by jumping from a higher floor scared of a pet dog trying to bite him while delivering food to a customer making news, Netra Singh of Class VI of St Peter’s High School, Bowenpally came out with a different approach to pets and developed a robotic pet.

She showcased her invention and spoke about it to a gathering of 1,000 plus comprising parents, teachers, non-teaching staff, guests and peers.

Robotic pets can help cure loneliness and give mental support, she said.  Especially post-COVID pet adoption has gone up and so also the cost of maintaining pets. We have also seen real pets scaring delivery boys (causing the death of a couple of food delivery boys). We have also been reading every day in newspapers about the menace of street dogs attacking infants and hurting them. We have also seen several posts on responsible pet parenting.  We have also seen pet news, pet clinics, costliest pets, and pet grooming professionals making news headlines.  

In this background, Netra Singh prompted the idea of a Robotic Pet and showed her version of Robotic Pet. She received thunderous applause for her thought when she spoke as part of a TED-like talk, a unique program which her school named 'Stars of Inspiration--an evening under the open sky' on its premises in Bowenpally.

“I am still working on it.  As of now, it is my idea.  I will seek professional mentoring to make it a commercial product,” she said. 

Her school principal Dr K Suvaran was excited about her thoughts and ideas as well as ideas from 50 other students of the school.  Though product development is still in a nascent stage, Robotic Pet is an idea worth exploring says Dr K. Suvarna. 

The pet population in our country is on the rise.  It is likely to rise to 45 million in the next five years. Every year, 600,000 pets are adopted in India. Given this potential, to me, my invention, Robotic Pet is a promising creation, the 12-year-old girl said.

The talk witnessed 50-plus students pouring out their new ideas, thoughts and perspectives.

In an era of short messages, short forms of videos like reels, shorts, and WhatsApp status videos. Accordingly, St Peter’s High School came up with TED-like short talks that fire up in two minutes to equip students to perform better.

Three three-member teams of Varenya, Pritam and Samuel of the school presented a ‘Fire and Gas Leakage Fichter Robot’ which was selected in the CBSE Regional Science Exhibition and will be participating in the National Exhibition in January 2024 in New Delhi. St Peter's team is one of the 30 exhibits selected out of 3,169 student teams registered.

TED-like talks are a school-level platform for ideas worth sharing. It is also an effort to grab attention in a period of an elevator journey as the attention span of people is on the decrease.