Sahasak Nimavum Golden Award

Sahasak Nimavum 2016, National Exhibition for Inventions and Innovations organized by the Sri Lanka Inventors Commission was held at the Nelum Pokuna Theatre, Colombo 7 on 26th of October 2016. A robot kit invented targeting kids by a team from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering won the 1 st place in the field of applied science and technology. The team consists of Yasura Gimhan Kossinhala Vithana, Hashini Hiranya Senaratne, Pubudu Chinthaka Gunatilaka, and Udith Arosha Gunaratna. The robot kid invention is a simple, interactive and expandable robot kit targeting kids. The invention consists of both hardware and software. A child can build robots with different capabilities by combining blocks like building a structure using building blocks. The software component automatically detects the capabilities of the robot that the child builds and allows him to program the robot using a very simple, drag and drop visual programming environment which is very similar to natural language commanding. The invention also allows community to develop hardware components compatible with the system and that creates another line of business.