AMIT POKHRE
PANAJI
He may just have an SSCE certificate to show for his qualifications but this Ponda man, who works as a skilled technical helper in a company at Bethora, has used his practical skills to develop a programmable robot which can work as a care-taker for individuals with special needs and those who are bed-ridden.
For Bipin Kadam, a necessity was the mother of his invention which he has aptly named ‘MaaRobot’ (Mother Robot). It feeds and takes care of his 14-year-old daughter with high degree of disability.
Kadam is also now working make his MaaRobot smarter and safer for other users.
“I work in a company which deals with 3D moulding of spare parts mainly of large cranes. My 14-year-old daughter Prajakta is a special child with almost 100 percent disability. To help my daughter I began working on the idea of a robot which will feed and care for her and I came up with MaaRobot,’’ Kadam told The Goan.
“I used work on this project after coming home following my 12-hour duty shift. I finished the project in six months”, he said, adding that the Robot which he has developed can now feed Prajakta any dish that is kept in different containers.
“Pre-programming of the Robot needs to be done and I want to further make this Robot smarter and safer for users,” he said.
Kadam is neither an engineer nor a man with money. He lives in a single-room tenement with his family, including his special daughter, ailing wife and a son.
He has 20 years of experience under his belt in the manufacturing sector, where he has worked on making different types of engineering tools and machines. Kadam’s ‘MaaRobot’ was displayed at the recent ‘KALPAK 2020’
exhibition held at Old Secretariat last week which got an overwhelming response from a tech-saavy audience where he got a proposal to develop a gadget to lift garbage from road-sides with a provision to be fitted onto a vehicle.
Kadam has the will to develop many such utility robots for use as care-givers to special children.
“I don’t want to sell my technology to multinational companies as these companies will sell the products at higher rates which will not be affordable to the poor,” he said.
He is now raising funds through the crowd-funding route on social media for further development of his MaaRobot and is also building a registry of needy people with disability.
“There are lakhs of disabled people in the world. I want them to become less dependent on others with the help of the Maa-Robot ‘’, Kadam said, dwelling on the inspiration that drove him to develop it.
He has also launched a website www.maarobot.com and has also uploaded information about the robot on his facebook page. He also helps engineering students complete their projects and is an expert in making 3D moulds.
