Team R Factor

A group of six Mumbai-based students, aged between nine-16 have been awarded the Gold Championship of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League (FLL) Asia Pacific Championship, a global engineering and robotics competition held in Sydney, Australia, between July 4-6. The only Indian team to have won an FLL championship, Team R Factor, comprising students from top-ranked Mumbai schools, bested 35 teams from 17 countries with their invention chris-tened Saffron, an electro-mechanical, user-friendly sensor-based robotic system designed to prevent mishaps during the process of food preparation. Team R engineered Saffron in line with the theme of “senior solutions” — desi-gned for routine problems faced by senior citizens — adopted by FLL.

“During interactions with grand-parents we became acutely aware that they suffer mishaps in the kitchen due to failing memory and/or sensory perception.This prompted us to invent Saffron, which is a robotic panel that records the heat of kitchen appliances. It sounds an alarm when an appliance is left unattended to beyond a safe period of time, and switches off the appliance automatically if there is no response,’’ explains Amay Saxena (15), a class X student of Bombay Scottish School.

The safe and simple invention of Team R Factor, comprising Saxena, Shrey Turakhiya (age 15, Jamnabai Narsee), Arvind Ranganathan (15, Ecole Mon-diale World School), Danesh Parwani (16, Podar International), Aakarsh Gupta (15, Dhirubhai Ambani International) and the youngest, Arman Sheth (9, Jamnabai Narsee), was adjudged the best among presentations by 35 student teams at the FLL Championship 2013. Team R Factor which was ranked # 3 at the national level out of 16 teams was chosen to represent India at FLL Asia; the first ranked team represents India at FLL US Open champ-ionship and the second at FLL Open European championship.

Asha Sundararajan, an alumna of Mumbai and Columbia universities, and promoter of the Children’s Technology Work-shop, Mumbai (CTW, estb. 2008), bestows high praise upon Team R Factor. “FIRST is an important competition and is highly regarded by US universities, so winning the champ-ionship is monumental for Team R Factor. It indicates that they have excelled across a whopping 27 categories of FLL,” says Sundararajan.

Against the backdrop of depressing reports of rock-bottom learning outcomes of Indian school children and their poor performance in international exams such as PISA, the award winning performance of Team R Factor is an indicator that all’s not lost.

Sunayana Nair (Mumbai)

Shraddha Somanath

Tiny tot Shraddha Somanath (5), a kindergartener of Greenwood High International School, Bangalore, has become a celebrity in her school and beyond, by bagging a silver medal at the Asian Schools Chess Championship held between August 30-September 6, in Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka.  Shraddha was the runner-up in the Classical Chess and Blitz categories in the Under-5 girls section of the champ-ionship, which attracted participation of 385 children from 15 countries worldwide.

Although barely able to tie her shoelaces, Shraddha’s grandfather and parents — Lakshmi N. and Somanath K. —  former national level chess players, are convinced that their daughter is a prodigy. Already, this preschooler is a veteran of competitive chess tourn-aments. In June, Shraddha was the runner-up in the Under-5 category at the National School Chess Championship held at Chennai, which drew 400 players from across the country. However, her first major victory was when she checkmated her opponents to bag a silver in the Under-7 girls category at the Dasara State Level Chess Tournament held in Mysore in October 2012. Since then, Shraddha has participated in eight state and national  tournaments.

With competitive chess play being a family passion, her parents believe Shraddha has a genetic aptitude for this mind game. “During the national and Asian championships, Shraddha exhi-bited unusual maturity by developing and applying novel moves and strategies. Although she lost to Sahi Patil of Maharashtra in the final of the nationals and the Asian Schools Cham-pionship in Sri Lanka, in the latter tournament she narrowed the differ-ence between her and Sahi from two points to less than half. This shows that Shraddha is rapidly improving her game,” says her proud mother Lakshmi who together with her husband, coaches budding Greenwood High chess players.

Like any other five-year-old, chirpy Shraddha watches cartoons on television in her free time and loves to “paint and eat ice cream”. However, she is assured of the full support and coaching of her doting parents to get to the top of the game. “Since she has begun very early and is doing well in competitive play, we are hopeful she will mature into an international player soon. We want Shraddha to become India’s youngest chess grandmaster and will give her all the support she needs,” enthuses Lakshmi.

Go get ’em Girl!

Sangeetha Samuel (Bangalore)