With the Covid19 situation around us, everything has come to a stand-still and humans are being imprisoned in their own house. But for a living one has to take in needed calories to survive otherwise before the Covid19, hunger would take a toll on humanity. So with the lockdown situation we are in right now, it becomes utmost important to have a Robotic companion in every house who could walk to the market and buy the essentials for the people. It need not be a humanoid, but just a wheeled robot with a container on top.
With the placing of orders being online people can place their orders on an app and do the payment. The Bot will have a display on top of it indicating the order number and details of the order. The shopkeeper can place the ordered things in the container and click delivered button on the app on his cell phone. This is received by the user who ordered and also the Bot. Now the Bot closes the container and is on the way back home. So, it is essential that the Bot remembers the trajectory it followed while moving towards the shop so that it can trace it back to it’s original location. This can be easily configured using a camera and stored in the memory of the Bot.
Secondly the Government or the municipality or even the Village panchayat can take help of drones in supplying Essential commodities to the people even if it is in the remote areas. The severity of the situation demands us to be smart and use the resources already available with us to put into good effect and not wait for someone to build a humanoid who works for us. And with the existing Robotic capability we can make this world a better place for us by flattening the Covid19 curve using social distancing with the help of Robotics.
By: Prof.Chilton Fernandes
Assistant Professor, S.R.I.E.I.T.
