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 christened 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” — designed 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 Mondiale 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 championship 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 championship 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)