Mihir Garimella, not your average kid originating from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania built his first motion censored light switch at the age of 11, just in cases he forgot to turn off the lights when in bed. That is just the beginning of this kid’s legendary life. Next up, at age 12 he built a robot that listened to sound samples of his violin and then tuned it accordingly. Fast forward a few years, mind you all these accomplishments took place before high school ended. Mihir won the Google Science Fair, he was a TEDx speaker, as well as designed a concussion detection kit that was reasonably priced, created a math app which read and solved handwritten problems, and was a co-author on paper about brain tumor diagnosis via image processing algorithms. By far one of the most accomplished kid I have ever read about!

That’s not all either! The product that put him on the map was, Firefly. A drone that got its inspiration from a fruit fly. Garimella was fascinated at how they were able to escape the danger of being swatted away. He was curious to see if he could apply similar maneuvers to his drone. With the help of professors at well renown universities and research, he was determined to make a drone that was smaller, able to escape easily, and still capable of doing its job. Mirhir has the hope of using his drone to help others. He said, “The idea is that you take (my) drone, plug in different sensors based on whatever task you’re trying to accomplish, and the drone would use those sensors to carry out a mission,” he says. “So, in a search and rescue situation after an earthquake, you could plug in a thermal camera and the drone would use that to find people who are trapped.”.

Now being a student at Stanford University, he is planning on putting the Firefly on the market within the next year or two.