For most teenage girls, participating in Kathak, singing pop
songs and playing the piano and ukulele may be nothing out of the ordinary.
This sister duo, Shruti and Nidhi have done all this but they take on an entire
new avatar when they are bringing robotics to life. Shruti, 16, and Nidhi
Mandrekar, 14, are both born and raised in New Jersey, USA. They are the
granddaughters of Ramesh Mandrekar, a gold medalist from College of Engineering
and an eminent engineering expert in Goa. “They visit Goa every year and wanted
to bring this STEM Empowerment Through Robotics initiative to our roots in
order to make an impact in the high school children in STEM at an early age,”
says senior corporate executive, Deepak Mandrekar, father to Shruti and Nidhi.
Their mother, Pallavi, is a doctor.
Nidhi had a passion in robotics
since she was 6 years old. She joined a robotics club and Shruti followed. They
soon competed in World Robot Olympiad (a global robotics competition) and
qualified for USA national championship for two consecutive years. Shruti moved
on to FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), a senior level global robotics competition,
involving larger metal robots. While the girls learnt new technologies and
witnessed success, they decided to form a non-profit organization to bring
robotics and STEM education to regions, across the world. Their goal is to
empower young children especially girls in STEM through robotics.
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“This STEM Empowerment Through Robotics initiative was planned
in 2020 but had to be deferred due to the pandemic. We proactively reached out
to a couple of schools. Others schools heard about the organization through
teachers and leaders in Coding And Robotics Education in Schools (CARES). Maya
Kamat, computer teacher at The Progress High School, Panjim and Saieesh Gandhi
(CARES) helped us select schools and lead students for each workshop. It was a
two series of three day workshop with three schools participating in each,”
says Deepak. The girls have so far conducted workshops in schools in Kenya,
India and USA.
The sisters usually conduct 5-6 series of workshops during their
summer school break globally during the year. They focus on LEGO EV3 or Spike
Prime robots from class 6 to 8 and larger FTC robots as it involves computer
aided designs (CAD), 3D printing, fabrication of metal parts, electrical setup,
programming in Java, etc for class 9 to 12. The workshops were held for
students of L D Samant High School, Porvorim, Saraswat Vidhyalaya, Mapusa, The
Progress High School, Panjim, Rosary High School, Bambolim and select students
from Mushtifund High School, Bambolim and Kendriya Vidyalaya, Verem.
Originally from Porvorim, Deepak sees this as an opportunity to
keep his daughters connected to their Goan roots, “Many of the students
initially were not sure whether they could design, build and program a FTC
robot, having no prior experience. At the end of these workshops, they walked
away with a lot of self belief and confidence that they can achieve anything
with correct focus and willingness to learn and adapt to evolving
technologies,” he adds. The same goes for Shruti and Nidhi, they had no formal
training and learnt everything on their own collaborating with peer FTC
competition teams. Most learning comes from forums, trial and error. Learning
through proof of concepts has been vital part for them. That’s why GiR has more
than one larger robots. One robot serves as research robot on which all trials
and proof of concepts are done.
“We were curious and excited to make a positive impact on these
kids. Both of us were amazed to see the transformation in each of these
children over the three days. At conclusion of the short stay, we were very
proud on the impact we made on the students who otherwise did not have the
opportunity to challenge their creative thinking and innovation skills. For
each workshop, grade 6 to 8 students, built 2 LEGO EV3 robots and 1 LEGO Spike
Prime robots and class 9-10 students, built large FTC robot mechanism. All four
robots were built and programmed during workshops,” says Shruti.
“They always enjoy training younger kids. They start explaining
robotics in layman terms and gradually transition to explaining robots,
components, functions, designs etc, in a manner that these young children can
absorb information without getting too technical. Then, they show LEGO robots
and their build process. Children enjoy Block programming and hence making
their entry into robotics is more fun than purely educational,” explains
Deepak.
Brilliant students at Cherokee High School in Marlton, New
Jersey, the sisters are also co-founders of Outer Galaxy, a competitive team of
Girls in Robotics that participates in FIRST Tech Challenge global robotics
tournament, a very popular robotics competitive event globally, amongst
students from class 9 to 12. They challenge themselves in building complex
robot to clash head-on with other robots during FTC tournaments. Two randomly
picked robot alliance clash against another two robots on the tournament field
to compete and score as many points as possible by executing mission tasks They
play between 35-50 matches every season across 8-10 tournaments.
Last
season, they won 16 out of 23 matches and were ranked third in their league and
qualified for state championship. “Outer Galaxy was also the Think Award
finalist (runner up) at New Jersey State Championship on July 13. The girls
displayed a consistent performance against some of the top high school teams in
the state. Usually, FTC competition is dominated by boys because of metal work,
fabrication, electrical, use of power tools etc. GiR is one of the few all
girls team,” says Deepak proudly.
