Rajkot: “Kem cho?” asks a student. The Rs 1,000-robot answers — not in polished English or formal Gujarati but in the Kathiawadi dialect the child speaks at home.At Bavdi Primary School in Liliya taluka of Amreli district, where only one or two State Transport buses run each day and public transport is scarce, students have found an unlikely new classroom companion: a low-cost, internet-connected robot that uses AI to answer questions in their own dialect.The questions are as rooted in their lives as the language. Why has a cow stopped giving milk? Which pesticide should be used for a particular crop? What should a farmer do when a problem arises in the field?The robot, developed by the school’s science teacher Varun Dave, cost just around Rs 1,000. Dave wrote the code himself, bought the required chips and connected the device to the internet and AI tools. He programmed it to respond in Gujarati and adapted its language to the Kathiawadi dialect spoken by his students and their families.“This is the first stage and I am improving it. Alexa and similar models are built using advanced technology and are expensive, while this product has been made with limited resources and at a very low cost,” Dave said.For Dave, however, the robot is more than a technology experiment. It is an extension of his way of teaching science.“This product is part of my teaching. I teach students through science experiments that explain how science has shaped and developed humankind,” he said.The robot quickly become a familiar presence in the classroom. Students turn to it when they encounter questions they cannot answer themselves, making it an informal question-and-answer companion.Their curiosity ranges across subjects, but many questions are closely connected to their surroundings and family livelihoods.Most students are from farming families, with agriculture and animal husbandry forming an important part of village life. Naturally, questions about crops, livestock and everyday rural problems dominate their interactions with the robot.Why has a cow stopped giving milk? Which pesticide is suitable for a particular crop? What can be done when a farming problem arises?Connected to the internet and AI tools, the robot can provide answers to many such questions.What makes the experiment noteworthy is not the sophistication of the machine but its simplicity and accessibility. Dave has shown that an AI-enabled interactive device does not require a high-end laboratory or expensive equipment. In a remote village classroom, a handful of locally sourced components, some coding and an internet connection have turned a Rs 1,000 machine into an AI companion that speaks the children’s own language.
