A large, supposedly dead, cow or buffalo or dog, floats on the Bagmati and lodges on a jutting edge. Policing the entire curvature of the river’s banks is a squad of giant robots – “how long is the Bagmati anyway? [break]It’s just from here to there.” Of course not the automated humanoids like Wall-E – “if we used such advanced robots, we would be in Japan” – these are more like bulldozers with pea brains, manually maneuvered by a human seated in front of the robo-saurus’s control board.
With the turn of a key, the robot lowers and extends its projecting blade, then lifts the carcass of solid organic waste to collect for fertilizer production. The non-degradable waste is taken elsewhere for disposal. In a day, four humans work six-hour shifts for one robot to labor indefinitely, and within a few months, Kathmandu’s riverfront is cleared. “It’s not a big deal.”
Manmade robots
In conceiving of a hypothetical Kathmandu, Dipesh makes solving problems like waste management seem so simple.
Given the necessary investment, Dipesh feels that robotics can be of great assistance to humans and that robotics students in Nepal are capable of bringing this to fruition. Robots can be designed to have superhuman levels of endurance, strength, and sensory abilities. Consider the alternative: “five to six people would need to be employed just to lift one cow, working for a minimum two to three hours. And human laborers get tired; they need to rest, which holds up work,” says Dipesh. Plus, robots would not be disgusted by the smell.
We can disregard his inaccuracies – the rarity of finding organic waste in as coherent a form as dead bovine – and his requirements – at least five crores of Rupees per robot. What he factors out – that separating organics from inorganic is a dexterous task – and his underlying assumptions – continuous electrical supply.
But to actually believe that Dipesh’s hypothetical scenario is a future reality requires a leap of faith that goes beyond technical and financial capacity and ricochets back to human will.
His imagined Kathmandu is therefore not revealing in what it shows robots can do that humans can’t, but in what it shows robots can do that humans aren’t.
This point was a major motivation for the Robotics Club of Tribhuvan University, Institute of Engineering, Pulchowk Campus, in designating the theme of this year’s Robocup 2069 competition – “Clean Bagmati, Green Kathmandu,” on which Dipesh’s sketch is based. “Garbage is growing, and all kinds of projects are coming to Bagmati, but still people aren’t aware,” says Abhishek Karna, a club member who through engineering hopes to evoke the question: “Why don’t humans do what even a robot can?”
Lift and move
Aside the theme, competitions like Robocup 2069 are ultimately about developing technical skills and galvanizing innovation to serve human needs – more so the former than the latter in countries like Nepal where robotics is still in its formative stages.
Currently, it’s National Robotics Week in the United States. The Pentagon has recently announced a competition for robots specialized to work in high-risk areas, and Iran just held its seventh annual robot football competition.
And on Saturday, May 19, an estimated 17 of the almost 30 engineering colleges across Nepal will face off in a league-style robotics competition, before an audience of over 6,000 in the Dashrath Stadium. Each team will design a manual and an automated robot that can symbolically separate waste, make manure and plant trees.
The challenge for each team will be in completing all the set tasks within a window of three minutes, without losing control of their robots or violating the size and weight requirements. Most of the student’s creative energies will go into programming and identifying suitable materials to build the robot, with little room for cool Inspector Gadget-style gimmicks. Risking loss, and with it their college’s financial support for future competitions, students sometimes sleep at their clubs for days prior to the big day. To win is reputation and a cash prize.
It will be a few years before Nepali robots start cart-wheeling, high-jumping, or simulating emotions like their foreign creations – at Robocup 2069, they will simply be lifting and moving. But one must really appreciate the efforts of students in nourishing robotics in Nepal, says Ramesh Chaudhary, Professor at Pulchowk Campus, who as a student two decades ago developed the first known robot in Nepal. Since the days of mechanical engineering, explains Ramesh, “the introduction of electronics and computer programming has really improved the flexibility of robotics in Nepal.”
But academic-industrial lin-kages are weak in the country, and the seminal enthusiasm of engineering students has not yet translated into practical scientific application.
According to Abhishek, “visible events like Robocup 2069 really raise the status of robotics. Every year we increase the level – we hope to solve problems but also raise the thinking capacity of students. It’ll take time for us to reach a certain standard but we have already seen a lot of improvements.”
After the competition, trophy and non-trophy robots will be dismantled. The various parts will be reused for future contests, with the hopes that some reincarnate may find life beyond its three minutes of fame.
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