Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi, successfully concluded the 2nd edition of its 4-week, fully residential School Camp Program on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (PRAYAS 2.0) this week. One hundred students were selected from over 3000 students throughout the state of Uttar Pradesh were given an opportunity to be a part of this camp. Along with this, a total of 50 Uttar Pradesh Govt. School teachers and 50 Industrial Training Institute (ITI) trainers, nominated under the Uttar Pradesh Skill Development Mission (UPSDM) were also a part of this camp.
During their stay, the students had classes on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence where they learned to use various programming techniques, sensors, actuators, communication devices, and power devices to assemble various components to build a robot. The students built several robots using the customized kits provided to them and programmed their bots in Python to make them workable.
Another interesting part of this year’s Summer Camp was the Mega G20-S20 Meet at IIT Mandi that gave the students an opportunity to showcase their projects to Mukesh Agnihotri, Deputy Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, during the Once Day Conclave on Skill India at IIT Mandi. Along with this, the students also participated in events such as World Environment Day, and International Yoga Day, among others. Regular Yoga and aerobics classes, Bhagavad Geeta sessions, motivational documentaries, plantation, and cleaning drives, visit to tinkering labs, were also a part of the camp.
The event concluded with a prize and certificate distribution ceremony at IIT Mandi campus. The young participants were also provided with a Take Home Robotics kit to help them further tinker with the technology.
Speaking about Prayas 2.0, Dr. Tushar Jain, Head, Centre for Continuing Education, IIT Mandi, said, “Seeing the success of PRAYAS 1.0, we have taken a step ahead in PRAYAS 2.0. Firstly, the teachers and trainers are also invited to this camp. This will help them to include the learnings in their curriculum and adopt them in their teaching methodology to reach a wider student base in UP with new initiatives at the local level. Secondly, we have scaled up this program for over 200 participants. In PRAYAS 3.0, we plan to organize the robotics competition also and take this program to a new level.”
