‘Bangalore is just starting to catch up’

Dr G Venkatesh, is a veteran in the field of robotics in India, with 32 years of experience, who has been teaching across India. According to Dr Venkatesh, Bangalore is very slow to catch up with new things despite being a tech city.

"I've been conducting workshops under the banner of 'Robotics Bangalore' for youngsters all across India for a decade and I've seen that there are very few people who are interested in the field in Bangalore compared to other cities. When I spoke to colleges and schools in the past they haven't shown any real interest," Venkatesh says.

"By nature everyone is interested in robotics, but a lot of institutes which have come up recently charge a huge fee while providing readymade kits which anyone can assemble. The problem with such an approach is that they will fiddle around with the kit and the software and get bored with it. The approach I take involves conceptualising, designing and building a robot instead of merely assembling them," he added.

According to Dr Venkatesh, robotics is a very boring subject as of now in colleges as it stresses on higher mathematics and very little hands-on training. "They need to revise the syllabus for the robotics subject to get students interested in the field. Most colleges also find it difficult to get faculty who have expertise in the field. To build a robot to work, one needs to know basic physics, have a bit of electrical and electronic know-how and should be able to understand mechanics. So it's something that anyone can do, starting from kids to college students," he says.

A lot of engineering students who have opted for robotics as a subject go to his workshop to work on their final project as he is one of the few people who does hands-on workshops.