Two Gujarat students kept fixing their firefighting robot for two years — and just won an international award

Jayvardhan Israni and Jainil Patel of Navrachana Vidyani Vidyalaya in Vadodara built Pralay Shamak, an autonomous firefighting robot — a machine that can detect a fire and move toward it, so people don't have to enter the most dangerous places first. They first built it for the World Robot Olympiad in India in 2024, and it didn't win. So they spent two more years on it: cutting, bending, drilling and welding the metal frame themselves, then fitting motors, cameras, sensors and controls, and talking to real firefighters about what responders actually face. This week in Hyderabad, their robot was named one of four winning teams in the World Robot Olympiad STEM Entrepreneur Program — earning a $5,000 award and six months of industry mentoring to take it toward the real world.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation