Bhubaneswar: During Diwali festival, hundreds of firecrackers are usually available in the markets for revellers. But have you ever heard of or seen a cracker that can be burst using Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Yes, it has been made possible by a B.Tech youth based in Odisha.
Meet K Manikanta, an Odia youth, has hogged national headlines for launching a rocket on Diwali using Amazon’s Alexa device. Mani posted the entire video on his Instagram page, ‘Mani’s Project Lab’, which drew millions of views within a couple of days.
In the video, Mani was heard giving a voice command to Alexa, and Alexa responded by launching the rocket. He captioned the video ‘Launching the rocket with Alexa’.
“Alexa, launch the rocket,” Mani commanded. The device responded quickly: “Yes, boss. Launching the rocket” as the firecracker took off.
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“I undertook this project to minimize the risk of firecrackers, which often cause burn injuries to Diwali revellers, especially young children. I just added an innovation to this Diwali,” he said while interacting with a local TV channel.
Explaining the project, he said, “I used a microcontroller that connects to Wi-Fi. Then, Nodemcu is connected end-to-end to the Alexa device. When we command Alexa, it passes the command to Nodemcu, ultimately making the battery fuse. The fused battery causes fire, helping launch the rocket.”
Mani stated that he conducted the experiment with some risks. “However, if we seriously want to develop such products, we can take several precautions before releasing the final products,” he added.
Social media users were curious about the process, so the young scientist shared a tutorial on his YouTube channel, teaching the method of making a smart rocket launch system using Alexa with an ESP32/ESP8266 microcontroller.
He said that 90% of viewers gave a positive response, while only 10% said it was a waste of time. “To prove them wrong, I uploaded the entire video to my YouTube channel,” he said.
