As senior Adithya Bellathur and his younger brother, freshman Akhilesh Bellathur, looked on in a classroom in Bangalore, India, 15 children crowded around a small obstacle course to watch a challenge involving a robot the group had built and coded.
The robot successfully picked up two small objects, then made a sharp 90-degree turn, missing one dumbbell-like object, but picking up another. A young boy muttered the phrase “it’s OK, it’s OK” right before the robot landed in the finish zone: a square sectioned off by a thin strip of black duct tape.
As the two brothers supervised the challenge, they stole a quick glance at the students and smiled, knowing they had instilled a passion for robotics in the lives of these children.
This past summer, Adithya and Akhilesh conducted six robotics workshops in Bangalore at four charity schools and a hostel for children whose parents are serving life sentences in prison. Students ranged from fifth-graders to 11th-graders.
Adithya began his robotics career in the eighth grade and became an avid member of the school’s M-SET club. He was inspired to bring his dream of creating a robotics workshop to life in the summer of 2014 because of his experiences in the organization For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology (FIRST). FIRST hosts robotics competitions and emphasizes spreading a passion for STEM to underprivileged children.
Akhilesh, on the other hand, found inspiration from his brother and wanted to help him carry out his goals.
“I decided to help out because my brother needed an extra pair of hands, and I wanted to give children the opportunity to learn and experience robotics,” Akhilesh said.
Adithya began executing logistics for the program by reaching out to families and schools close to his grandmother’s house two months before an India trip in 2014. That summer, he was able to teach at two schools and a few children who lived in his grandmother’s apartment complex.
Through his first workshops in 2014, Adithya was able to perfect his lesson plans and find ways to make them more adaptable to the learning pace of the students.
After one year of experience, Adithya expanded his workshops to more schools and hostels in the community, teaching approximately 90 students this past summer. He began writing the lesson plans for these workshops in last May and continued adapting them throughout his time in India.
Adithya centered the workshop around the Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit and created his own equipment, such as an obstacle course, for the robots to compete on. He used this equipment at each workshop he taught at. These workshops lasted two to three days and included 15 to 20 students. The brothers each supervised a team of students, guiding them as they worked on their robots.
Both Adithya and Akhilesh were determined to make sure that their students, after learning the basics, used their own creativity to code and built the robots in a way that would be effective in completing the challenges Adithya created.
Although many of the children he taught were underprivileged, Adithya found they were not hindered by the complexity of the robots.
“I often had to create new lessons on the spot because the kids all learned much faster than I expected,” Adithya said. “They were able to master the programming really quickly. They finished tasks that took my friends and I weeks to complete in less than an hour.”
Adithya credits the students’ personal adaptations of the challenges to the flexibility of robotics. In fact, he said his favorite aspect of robotics is observing how people use their own style and creativity to answer the same question in multiple ways.
During the weeks they were both teaching, the brothers spent their mornings charging the laptops and robots before leaving to teach. After collaborating with administration at the schools, they would set up the classroom, teach new concepts about coding or robotics and converse with the students before returning home at 6 p.m.
For the brothers, nothing compared to the enthusiasm the students had for the challenges and races they competed in.
“Just seeing their eyes light up when they succeed in doing something completely new to them was by far the best part of the whole experience,” Adithya said.
Adithya attributes the success of the workshops to Akhilesh’s constant support. He said they would not have run as smoothly as they did without him.
“My brother was my partner-in crime and was absolutely crucial in making the workshop work,” Adithya said.
Akhilesh’s presence gave Adithya more flexibility in teaching by watching over the kids and teaching segments of the workshops. Akhilesh was amazed by the students’ work ethic. He noticed that the students were motivated to work harder after hitting road blocks.
When running into errors in code, the students would run tests countless times without giving up, hoping their robot would work before the competition. Either way, when it was time to compete with the robots, the children supported each other.
“No matter if they won or lost, the team would jump for joy, cheer and start giving each other high-fives,” Akhilesh said.
