12-yr-old Hyderabad girl invents robotic pet

Netra Singh, a class six student of St Peter’s High-School has built a Robotic Pet. She showcased her invention on Tuesday to a gathering of over 1,000 comprising parents, teachers, non-teaching staff, guests and peers. Robotic pets can help cure loneliness and give mental support, she said speaking at a TED-like talk, ‘Stars of Inspiration--an evening under the open sky,’ a programme organised by the School.

Presenting her robotic pet she said, “I am still working on it. As of now, it is my idea. I will seek professional mentoring to make it a commercial product.” The School Principal Dr K Suvaran expressed excitement about Singh’s idea, alongside ideas from 50 other students of the school. Though the product development is still at a nascent stage, Robotic Pet is an idea worth exploring said Dr Suvarna. The Principal highlighted that in an era of short messages, short forms of videos like Reels, Shorts, and WhatsApp status videos, the School came up with TED-like short talks that fire up in two minutes and equip students to perform better.

The other ideas presented during the event included that of a Fire and Gas Leakage Fichter Robot, by three-member team of Varenya, Pritam and Samuel, which was selected in the CBSE Regional Science Exhibition. The team will be participating in the National Exhibition that will be held in New Delhi. St Peter’s team is one of the 30 exhibits selected out of 3,169 student teams registered. The Principal further added that 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 where attention span of people is declining.