Visakhapatnam: Little Pico creates awareness about Covid-19

Visakhapatnam: Do you have fever, headache, body pain or flu? Asks little Pico. After which he takes the viewers to five primary things that help fight Covid-19 while laying emphasis on washing hands thoroughly and maintaining social distancing.

Pico is the chatbox app that draws the attention of children and makes them follow precautionary measures and safety protocols to keep coronavirus at bay.

Pico was developed by a Class X student of Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare Residential School (APSWRS), Centre of Excellence, Kommadi, K Lathika Sai Priya Varshini with an aim to create awareness about Covid-19 and preventive mechanism either by sharing text or voice or both.

Designed using Artificial Intelligence (AI), it took five days for Varshini to develop the app along with the guidance of her mentor G Dinesh, Principal of APSWRS S Rupavathi and Physical Science teacher and ATL in-charge of the school T Rambabu.

The app is brought out as a part of NITI Aayog's Atal Tinkering Community Challenge 2020,a nationwide online game competition. The contest drew about 7,000 entries across the nation. Of them, two girls from Andhra Pradesh find a place in the top 10 list. One of them is Varshini's 'Pico the chatbox' and the other participant is from Vizianagaram.

Earlier, Varshini was selected for a 10-day residential workshop on 'Innovation programme on deep technologies,' an advanced research on robotics and drones held in Sochi, Russia. "This is another opportunity for me to learn more about AI-based app. It includes game development as well as 3D-designing. The idea behind creating the chatbox is to build awareness on Covid-19 which eventually aids in staying away from the pandemic-induced panic situation," Varshini tells The Hans India.

The selected students will next be trained by Learning Links Foundation to further fine tune the app and develop it into an advanced application and make it accessible for the public.