School Teacher makes robot which talks 9 local plus 38 foreign languages

Lucknow: A Kendriya Vidyalaya computer teacher developed a robot that speaks nine local languages and 38 foreign languages. Dinesh Patel, a teacher at KV at IIT Bombay, hails from Rajmalpur village in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh and made the robot he named 'Shalu'.

Dinesh told IANS that Shalu, similar to the robot 'Sophia' developed by Hanson Robotics, was born out of inspiration from the Bollywood movie 'Robot'. Dinesh said, "Shalu has been developed using waste materials like plastic, cardboard, wood, aluminium etc. It took three years to develop it, and the expenditure was around Rs 50,000."

He added that Shalu is a prototype and claimed that it could recognise people, answer GK and Maths questions, memorise things, etc. "Shalu can greet people, display emotions, read a newspaper, recite recipes and perform many other activities. It can be used as a teacher in schools and as a receptionist in offices too," he told IANS.

The robot received appreciations from various levels. Professor Supratik Chakravarty, Computer Science and Engineering department faculty of IIT Bombay, said in a letter to Dinesh Patel that his work is excellent and could inspire next-gen scientists. He added that Shalu could be used in fields like education and entertainment.