Four students of St. Aloysius Higher Secondary School, Edathua, in Kuttanad have bagged the INSPIRE (Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research) Awards 2023-24 for their innovative ideas. The awards are instituted by the National Innovation Foundation under the Department of Science and Technology.
Those who won prizes are Mano Tom Devasia, Jerom Mathew, Savio Anto, all Class IX students, and Class VIII student Ben Antony. They are among one lakh students selected from across the country for the first round of the awards. It carries a purse of ₹10,000 each.
While Mano presented the idea of an Aquanaut robot (a rescue robot that can be deployed in flooded areas), Jerom came up with a mind-controlled wheelchair by neural transmission, Savio (three-phase transmission line fault detector) and Ben (robotic cleaner, which can self identify and classify waste). The students attributed their achievement to the Atal Tinkering Lab at the school and its coordinator Jestil K. John.