By Khalida Sarwari
Whether it’s earthquakes on the West Coast or hurricanes on the East Coast, natural disasters are unfortunately a part of life.
Just recently, Typhoon Haiyan ripped through the Philippines, leaving the region battered with countless victims in its wake. The difficult task of finding and helping survivors was by-and-large left up to organizations such as the American Red Cross.
Reflecting on this issue, a group of Redwood Middle School students recently came up with a few of their own solutions that landed them in first place in a local robotics competition.
The first is a prototype the students designed for a beacon that allows a disaster victim to push a button on a hardware device on either a key chain, smartphone or wallet that relays information about the individual’s exact location.
The second device is a two-way solar-powered communicator that enables communication during disasters, letting victims share with search and rescue teams what they need, whether that be food, water or medicine.
What makes the mechanisms unique is that they are designed to rely not on cell phone frequencies, but on radio frequencies that are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission by a spectrum management process called frequency allocation.
“The topic was ‘Nature’s Fury,’ ” said Vijay Meduri, referring to the First Lego League competition held Nov. 17 at Blach Intermediate School in Los Altos. The challenge encouraged students to discover new solutions to protect people during natural disasters.
Along with Gopal Aggarwal, Meduri coached the Magic Dunkeys, a group of six Redwood eighth-graders who bested 24 other teams across the Bay Area in the annual competition. FLL, which organizes competitions all over the world, is a robotics program for 9- to 14-year-olds that aims to get children excited about science and technology.
The competition is similar to a sports league, Meduri said. “This you can think of as a league for engineering and science and it’s a fun way to do it.”
The Magic Dunkeys won the championship based on their project, core values, robot design and performance.
“The team got together and brainstormed and they chose earthquakes as one of the natural disasters to focus on, given the fact that Saratoga gets a lot of earthquakes,” Meduri said. “They essentially did some research on that area and found that after an earthquake typically cell phones go down and communication gets shut down and the biggest challenge for rescue teams is to find people.”
The design process took the students about three weeks, and was followed by nearly two months of programming, Meduri said. They plan to continue fine-tuning their project in preparation for the second round, which is scheduled to be held early next year.
Ayush Aggarwal, 13, said he could envision either of the devices his team designed being mass-produced one day.
“It’s really fun hanging out with all my friends and building something we know in the future will do great things,” he said. “And I feel great knowing that we can go through one more round and have fun together.”
The other members of the Magic Dunkeys team are Alex Tran, Jaijit Singh, Naveen Tiwary, Shivaum Kumar and Varun Meduri.
