It is said “A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education”, my curiosity got the best of me when I toyed with a remote controlled car. My inkling towards robotics was kindled by this simple toy that has been every child’s fancy. Checking different connections, un-wiring, re-wiring and fiddling with every part of the remote car got me in-tune with robotics.

This inspired me to extend the idea of a remote controlled car to a more sophisticated version, where in, my car could maneuver through a pre-defined path on its own, with the help of trackers. One thing led to another and I moved from land to air!! Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) fascinated me. And a deep sense to produce something that will have an impact on people brought me to the idea of using UAVs for organ transfer. Yes, the Green Corridor definitely has impacted our lives, but what if something faster can be used to save lives relying on movement. And thus a Quad-copter for organ transfer was materialized. At a time when amazon was selling pre-assembled, ready-to-fly-in-two-days drones, I co-created an AV, from scratch, where every process was thought through, each design specification computed and realized for our requirement, including the frame design. Our UAV was comparable with the commercially available drones.

This project landed me an internship with one of India’s best multidisciplinary R&D center – Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre, which is a joint initiative of IIT Madras and Dept., of Biotechnology, Govt., of India. My journey at HTIC started with the development of robust algorithms for real world problems like heart rate estimation, stress detection, etc., The outcome of the projects transpired as various publications. The exposure at this institute motivated me to take up challenging, hard-core robotic problems. My passion for developing core internal algorithms in robotics got me ashore an amazing, one of its kind project. It is India’s FIRST Robotic System for spinal surgery. This Image Guided Robotic Spine Surgery is a minimally invasive procedure yielding superior results, with reduced procedure time, hospital stay and recovery time for the patient.

“Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is a love for humanity” as Hippocrates rightly said, there is nothing more satisfying than to be able to serve mankind and to co-create cutting edge, innovative and affordable technology, that can transfigure the current healthcare scenario.