Pang Yeng Ying
Mentors: Therese Heng & Ng Guo Liang
Yeng Ying is an 11-year-old student from Westwood Primary School. In her free time, she likes to create things and work on engineering projects. She joined the Lighthouse Programme in hopes of working on her project that was inspired by a video she came across of child labour for Mica powder mining in caves in rural India. She hopes to be able to help these children work in more favourable conditions by rethinking solutions to rescue them as often, the danger lies in these caves easily collapsing, in turn endangering them as they end up getting trapped. This project reflects her level of empathy for others in wanting to solve a problem in need.
The Project
I would like to design an excavation and rescue moving robot, Excabot, that is fitted with a detector, such that should a cave collapse, the excavator will be activated to immediately start digging up the excess soil to create an entrance for the children to escape from. The Excabot will also be well fitted with an alarm system that will be triggered as a means to quickly alert others of a cave collapse, and to offer reassurance to children that help is on the way and they will feel relieved.
Through this project, I also hope to raise awareness of the current situation of Mica powder mining and to highlight the severity of the problem to the Indian government, in hopes that something can be done to impactfully resolve this issue. I will come back to VIVITA to work on my prototype. I will source for materials like solar panels, shovel, and Microbit as well so I can code the alarm system for my Excabot!”
