Welcome to our Podcast Session with yet another eminent guest of the Technological Industry - Mr Balaji Thiru, who has been significantly working in the Robotics Area for over a decade! 

He has been a torch bearer of educating the student community primarily in the robotics domain. He has introduced over a 1000 government school and 3400+ students online to the art of robotics and motivated them to explore this area.

He has also submitted 7 patent, out of which 2 have already been published and holds over a 100 paper publications in national and international journal conferences. 

To add to his endless achievements, he started the First Rural Robot Industry: Village Tech School and Tamil Robotics Club

Welcome to the show Balaji! What a wonderful opportunity to be interacting with you!

Well, let's start with the basic! 

 Could you provide our audience an overview of Robotics and Robots? 
Robotics is a multidisciplinary subject that involves computer science, mechanical  engineering, electrical engineering and many other sciences. Robot is a rep-programmable machine. Robot has three main functions think, act, sense.

Well, now that we know about Robots, could you through some light on the various types of Robots and which one do you think would the the most common ones?
Generally we have Unmanned Arial Vehicles, Underwater Vehicles. But based on applications we have Industrial Robots, Healthcare Robots, Space Robots, Rescue Robots etc.

Now that we know a lot about the robots, can you tell us about the architecture design or the Technology behind making it? 
There are three main Components:
Mechanical System: CAD, drive systems, wheels, body, suspension etc.
Electrical System: Electric CAD, Micro Controllers, power systems, Control System etc.
Software System: Programming Languages, Image Processing, ROS etc.

However, our audience might want to know as of how can anyone even without any prior experience of robot-designing, make his/her own robot? Could you tell us some methods of making a basic Robot? 
I have given 100+ webinars on how to build a basic robot. The construction of robot depends on the application, drive system ,sensor, micro-controller, battery. The basic robot is a line follower robot that follows a particular line.

I have designed a DIY robotic kit called "LILLY BOT" that is low cost model and can de used to teach robotics, programming, AI, and many advanced technologies to people and is very easy to use. All people above 10 years can use this and learn from this.

While we see a lot of articles on the future being taken over by Robots, what are your views on the future of robots and human race? 
Future will be dominated by robotics and the advancements in robotics will definitely overshadow humans.

As you have done some significant advances to educating children about robotics to working with startups in this field, what do you think is the motivational factor behind your interest? Or the story behind you?
When i saw Honda robot for the first time during my childhood I was very much influenced by it and this sparked an interest in me to pursue robotics.


What is your reason for choosing a government school?
Basically, I am from a government school and I have seen that people there lack the resources but not the fire to perform. So, I want to empower these children with the resources and create rural innovators and that is my aim which I want to achieve in the future

Thank you Balaji for such an intuitive session and sharing your extensive knowledge. We believe our audience has gained much more insights on robots and its design. 

We will be bringing many more exciting episodes on Technological advances. Till then, Jharna here, signing off.

 But you stay safe and stay healthy.