Rural Karnataka Teacher Builds Low-Cost Humanoid Robot To Boost Learning In Village Schools

This article was originally published on the NITI Frontier Tech Respository. In many Indian villages, digital learning remains out of reach. Chalkboards and handmade visuals are still the norm, and overstretched teachers juggle multiple roles. It was against this backdrop that Akshay Mashelkar decided to act — not by waiting for top-down reform, but by building something himself. Inspired by the idea of bringing innovation into rural classrooms, he designed Shiksha: an interactive, humanoid teaching assistant that could support learning even where resources were scarce. His goal was simple ...