Indian inventor creates children's science toys from trash

Children in the First World have a lot of choice when it comes to scientific toys. In fact, there are whole stores devoted to selling things like robotics kits, ant farms, and simple microscopes. In the developing world, however, such fancy toys are relatively scarce. So, what's an adult to do if they want to get the local children interested in the sciences? Well, in the case of Arvind Gupta, they show the kids how to make scientific toys from trash.

Gupta's story began in the 70s, when he was an engineering student at the Indian Institute of Technology. While he was there, he volunteered to teach the children of the mess staff, who couldn't afford a formal education.

Upon graduation, he went on to work at Tata Motors, where he helped to build trucks. After five years of doing so, however, he decided that it wasn't the career for him. In 1978, he took a one-year leave from his job, and took part in the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program. "The objective was to make science fun and exciting for village children using simple, low-cost materials available in their environment," he told us. "This experience had a profound impact on me. I thought it was much more satisfying than making trucks."

Gupta proceeded to devote his life to designing toys that demonstrate scientific principles, that children can build for themselves out of cheap or free parts. He's written numerous instructional books on the subject, starting with 1986's Matchstick Models and other Science Experiments, which has been reprinted in 12 languages.

Today, he is part of the four-person team that runs the Children's Science Centre, at India's Pune University. Together, they have designed approximately 800 trash-based educational toys ... so far. Instructions and explanations for all of the toys are available copyright-free through their Toys-from-Trash website, as are all of their books, and over 250 linked YouTube videos.

"Every day over 50,000 children and teachers across the world watch these videos," said Gupta. "Thousands of books are downloaded every day and this fills our hearts with hope and joy. We feel privileged to be able to share our work with at least some children across the world."

Out of all of the toys, there are a few that have proven particularly popular. One of those is Matchstick Mecanno, in which little bits of rubber bicycle valve tube and matchsticks are used to make 2D and 3D shapes. Other favorites include the Simple Electric Motor and the Levitating Pencil, in which ring magnets are used to keep a spinning pencil floating in the air.

One of his young students, a girl named Hamsa Padmanabhan, found the pencil toy particularly fascinating. "She wrote a 12-page scientific paper on it, which won the second Intel International Award of US$2,500. Today a minor planet is named after Hamsa," he told us. "Another girl, Durga Jetty, made the Bottle Turbine which won her 0.6 million Indian Rupees! This is quite a feat."

Needless to say, however, Arvind isn't in it for the money, nor for the chance to become famous. Instead, he simply wishes to nurture a quality that he believes all children possess.

"Every child is born a scientist," he said. "We kill this innate curiosity by rote learning and boring state texts. If we just remove some of the authoritarian structures in schools, children will naturally gravitate to science - simply because science is fun and exciting."

An example of one of the instructional videos can be seen below.

Source: Toys-from-Trash

Robot becomes a leader among fish

A couple of years ago, a team of scientists from the University of Leeds succeeded in getting live stickleback fish to follow a computer-controlled "Robofish" as it was moved through their aquarium. Part of the reason for the experiment was to learn about fish behavior, in hopes that human interference in their migration routes could be minimized. While the Robofish was simply a plaster model, researchers from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University recently conducted a similar experiment, but using an actual tail-flapping robotic fish. Their discoveries could help save wild fish populations in the event of environmental disasters.

The study was conducted by NYU-Poly's Maurizio Porfiri and Stefano Marras. Their biomimetic fish, as it was called, was placed in a tunnel of flowing water, along with a school of golden shiners. At first, the scientists kept its tail absolutely still, and the shiners showed little interest. As its tail began to move, however, the shiners started to fall in behind it.

Through varying the speed of its tail beats, the researchers noted that the tail beats of the following fish were always accordingly somewhat slower, which suggested that they were saving energy by riding in the slipstream of the robot. This falls in line with what has been observed in nature, where leading fish exhibit faster tail beats than the rest of the school.

It is hoped that in the future, descendants of the biomimetic fish could be used in natural settings, to lead groups of wild fish away from polluted areas or structures such as dams. Likewise, devices such as robotic birds could perhaps be used to lead other types of animals to safety.

"These experiments may open up new channels for us to explore the possibilities for robotic interactions with live animals - an area that is largely untapped," said Porfiri. "By looking to nature to guide our design, and creating robots that tap into animals' natural cues, we may be able to influence collective animal behavior to aid environmental conservation and disaster recovery efforts."

A paper on the research was recently published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Source: Polytechnic Institute of New York University

Quadrotors perform James Bond theme

When we last heard from the University of Pennsylvania's General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab, researchers there had provided video of a swarm of quadrotor robots, which they had programmed to perform somepretty impressive precision flying. Well, now the GRASP quadrotors are back, performing a feat that's certainly much more ... entertaining. In a video that was presented yesterday at the TED2012 conference in California, a group of the little guys are shown performing the James Bond theme on musical instruments.

The quadrotors performed in a room that was equipped with infrared lights and cameras. Reflectors on the struts of each robot reflected the light to the cameras, which allowed the system to determine each quadrotor's exact position within the room. That information was then relayed wirelessly back to the robots, to make them aware of their own location, and those of the other robots.

In order to perform the music, each quadrotor had been assigned a set of waypoints in three-dimensional space, each one of which they had to reach at a precise point in time. While those coordinates had been programmed in by human operators, it was up to each robot to determine how to reach its waypoints on time, without disturbing the other units.

While the video below is certainly fun to watch, the exercise performed in it is aimed at improving the quadrotors' performance in much more practical applications. By learning how to get jobs done while staying out of each others' way, the robots could be better able to perform duties such as surveying disaster sites, establishing wireless communications relays, or even building structures.

Source: University of Pennsylvania via IEEE Spectrum