Pained by his ailing wife’s inability to feed their differently-abled daughter, a daily wage worker in Goa with no technical knowledge has built a robot to assist the girl in eating without the assistance of others.
The Goa State Innovation Council has praised Bipin Kadam for his ‘Maa Robot’ innovation and is providing him with financial support to work on the machine further and explore its commercial viability.
The food is kept on a plate that is attached to the robot. It feeds the girl, who is unable to move or lift her hands, based on a voice command that specifies what she wants to eat, such as vegetables, dal-rice mix, or other items. Kadam, a resident of Bethora village in Ponda taluka in south Goa, is in his 40s and works as a daily wage worker.
He told that his 14-year-old daughter is differently-abled and cannot eat on her own. She was entirely dependent on her mother to have her meals.
“About two years back, my wife was bed-ridden. She used to feel sad and cry as she was not able to feed our daughter. I had to come from work to feed our daughter,” he said.
Kadam’s wife insisted he should do something so that their daughter could have meals on time without being dependent on anyone.
This led Kadam to start a search about a year back for a robot which could feed her. “There was no such robot available anywhere. So, I decided to design it myself,” he said. Kadam looked for information online to learn the basics of a software.
“I would work for 12 hours without a break and then spend the rest of my time in researching and learning how to make a robot. I researched continuously for four months and then designed this robot. I get energised when I come back from work and see my daughter smiling at me,” he said.
The ‘Maa Robot’ feeds the girl on her voice command, he added.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been promoting an Atmanirbhar Bharat. The same way, I wanted to make my child atmanirbhar (self-reliant) and not dependent on anyone,” he said.
Kadam said he wants to make similar robots for other children too. “I want to take this robot across the globe,” he said.
The Goa State Innovation Council praised Kadam’s work and is providing him with financial assistance to fine-tune his robot and explore a commercial market for the product.
Sudeep Faldesai, project director at the Council, stated that Kadam has prepared a scalable product that can assist several people who are in a similar situation.
Faldesai stated that a price for this product cannot be determined at this time because it has yet to be commercially evaluated.
