KARACHI: The robotic manipulator demonstrations, a part of the World Space Week celebrations organised by the Pakistan Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Comm­ission (Suparco) at PAF Museum on Saturday, turned out to be something quite unexpected as one was not prepared for such a high level of knowledge and expertise from local university students.

Robotic manipulators are devices used to manipulate materials without direct contact with them.

There were bionic arms, drone planes, quadcopters, car simulators, etc.

Sick and tired of the long queues for henna applications, especially on chand raat, Mahjabeen Fatima, Raima Naz, Hina Ahmed and Anam Zakir of Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology had made a superficial henna hand decoration.

A bionic arm created by Mohammad Mairaj of Usman University was made with the disabled in mind. “It can help in the physiotherapy of the disabled too,” the student of engineering said.

Some more stalls had complicated but lightweight aeroplanes made from styrofoam and cardboard.

Another group of students had made something as simple as a car driving simulator to help people get traffic education before actually driving on the road.

Another set of four brilliant minds — Hamza Shafiq, Saqib Rehman, Fahad Nazeer and Fawad Hussain — from Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology, had a quadcopter using drone technology as their final-year project. It can help in agriculture. “We can attach a camera to it to check crops because when you have vegetation on over 10 acres of land, you can’t really do it manually,” said the team leader Hamza.

The students said that the robotic manipulators were still prototypes which can be modified as per needs and requirements 6of users.

“We have shown that we have the technology and we hope to find a big market for our creations,” said Hamza.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2018