Saksham, search and rescue
Independent · 2018 – 2024
Bronze medal, CASTIC · Indian patent filed
Abstract
The 2015 Nepal earthquake left a survivor trapped under debris for 25 hours because rescuers could not locate him. My father asked how a rescuer knows where someone is buried. I did not have an answer, so I built Saksham: a heterogeneous multi-robot system for urban search and rescue, pairing an aerial platform with a ground platform so each covers what the other cannot.
The system
Ground-penetrating radar, vision, gas sensing and LoRa communication carry the detection and reporting across the two platforms. I built and tested the hardware for both the aerial and ground vehicles.
Why it mattered
Saksham was how I found robotics. Someone’s life would rest on whether the machine was right, and I have wanted to build machines worth that trust ever since.
It won a bronze medal at CASTIC in China two years after I started it. Indian patent application no. 202421050737, filed July 2024.