Gracious Ephraim, young Tanzanian innovator invents a solar powered robot

Gracious Ephraim, a form six  student at Ilboru High School in Arusha, Tanzanian created a solar energy powered human robot. The robot can walk, turn its head, speak and perform other tasks. The student, who combines Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics used basic materials that were available to him, and started working on the project almost a year ago.

Read: Ground breaking innovations: Ugandan scientists develop herbal anti-malaria drug

According to Daily News, he constructed the robot with materials such as memory chips (for the brain), an entire geometrical set (this included the aluminium set and its contents), wires, tin containers, among other materials which he funded himself from his pocket money. Everything cost him 200,000 Tanzania shillings.

The student told Daily News, “I am trying to innovate things that can solve problems because for many years, science students in the country did not want to invent, they were all focusing on getting employed but being a scientist is all about devising and making new things.”

Ephraim’s teachers said he was the only student in the whole country to build a robot that could actually move. The robot, which is operated through remote programming is capable of bending down to pick two packages and move with the load balanced on its arms before laying them down on the ground neatly.

Ephraim added, “Tanzania aims at industrialisation meaning that factories and other production lines must work 24 hours, but humans cannot work around the clock, so I envisage to have robots working at night and people during the day, this will also reduce the costs of paying workers overtime.”

He emphasized the effectiveness of his robot, and how its competes tasks much better than humans.

Read: Cameroonian innovator Arthur Zang wins Engineering Innovation Prize for Cardio-Pad

When asked about the capability of his robot to speak, he said he installed a memory card with already recorded voice notes that can be remotely triggered to make the home-made machine reply to specific questions or even sing some songs.

Hopefully a brilliant mind with the desire to keep innovating will not be lost to brain drain.