12th grade student from Singapore builds an affordable real time water quality monitoring system for cleaning Indian Lakes
Sidharth Maheshwari, 12th grade student at Singapore American School, Singapore has built NeerBot, an affordable real time water quality monitoring system to assist NGOs and Government in cleaning of Indian lakes. Current water quality monitoring is a manual process and can take upto 2-3 weeks, making cleanliness interventions ineffective. Industrial scale water monitoring systems are largely imported, expensive and not opensource, making it impractical for organizations responsible for water bodies to adopt.
Sidharth, who has been deeply involved in robotics for the last four years, leveraged his experience in building underwater Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs) through his school club, to build low cost alternatives by developing the system from scratch using core robotics principles. Because the water quality varies significantly across the lake, Sidharth also integrated the water quality monitor with a remote controlled boat so that the system can navigate across various parts of lake in an unmanned manner. Sidharth commented “Growing up in Gurgaon, where I did my elementary school, I was well aware of the environmental challenges India faces. I am so glad that technology and design thinking have beautifully come together in NeerBot to create a solution which could have a meaningful impact on water cleaning initiatives.”
NeerBot was successfully pilot tested at Bhandwari Lake, Haryana in partnership with Hara Jeevan, an NGO responsible for restoring and cleaning the lake. Manisha Saini, CEO of Hara Jeevan commented “NeerBot is a much needed solution for us as manual testing process makes our interventions ineffective. I am excited to see how the NeerBot mobile platform, which stores historical water quality data in the cloud, can be further expanded to provide more detailed analytics such as intervention recommendations. It's been super fun to work with Sidharth, who is not only a brilliant technologist but also a passionate environmentalist who wants to use technology to create a large-scale impact on the community. We need more students like Sidharth who can build affordable deep tech solutions for grass root problems of India.”
Sidharth’s work has won him the prestigious Crest Gold award by British Science Association. Sidharth has also received a grant from a prominent venture capitalist to be able to further develop NeerBot.
About NeerBot
NeerBot ( https://neerbot.in ), is an affordable realtime water quality monitoring system to help organizations with water cleaning and maintenance efforts. The NeerBot product comes with a Remote Controlled Boat with a Water Monitoring Device mounted on it. The system monitors core water quality parameters – ph, Turbidity, TDS and Dissolved Oxygen – along with the location parameters. The product also comes with a NeerBot web application, which provides location specific historical analysis of water quality.
About Hara Jeevan
Hara Jeevan ( https://harajeevan.org ), is a ten-year-old leading environmental non-profit in Delhi which focuses on environment restoration projects such as restoring lakes, planting trees and re-engineering waste. Hara Jeevan has a 30 member team which partners with Government and private organizations to undertake environmental restoration projects.
About Sidharth Maheshwari
Sidharth was born in San Francisco, US and moved to Gurgaon, India at the young age of two. After doing his elementary school in India, Sidharth moved to Singapore for his middle and high school and has been studying at Singapore American School for the last six years.
Sidharth is the Captain of school Robotics club and as part of the club has built underwater ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles). Sidharth has also represented his school at MATE ROV world competition, where schools all over the world showcase their ROVs. These ROVs are used for underwater explorations including cleansing expeditions.
