The robot, designed by MCC Higher Secondary School physics teacher W Paulson Priyadoss, comes with six functions — it can clean sewers; drain and store floodwater; treat the stored water and use it to water plants; identify potholes on roads and cover them; segregate waste lying on roads into ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ and store it in its inbuilt tank; and identify and remove dead animals lying on the road.“It is a multi-functional road maintenance robot, built at a cost of about 30,000. For now, it requires personnel to monitor and control it on the road. I am looking to technically advance it further,” Paulson, who won the fourth place under the ‘Teachers’ Exhibit’ category, told TOI. He was among the 10 people selected from the state level for the contest. Meanwhile, a personal experience drove N Mugundhan to create the locker system. “I once went to school without locking my house, upsetting my mother,” the Class X student of Govt Boys Higher Secondary School, Ponneri, said. His locker model, designed through a switch-based password system connected to a circuit, allows users entry only after typing in the correct password. Typing in an incorrect password in the second attempt sets off a buzzer, alerting people to intruders. “I am working on upgrading the system to send personalized inputs to mobile phones soon,” he said after bagging the fourth prize under the ‘Students Exhibit (Individual)’ category.
