'With hard work, we can achieve anything': This Kerala boy has built cardboard robots that do most household chores

There's a kitchen table somewhere in Kerala that most parents would probably want cleared off, flattened cereal boxes, loose wires, a jumble of nuts and bolts, a couple of motors salvaged from who-knows-where. For one schoolboy, that clutter isn't mess. It's raw material. And what he's been building out of it has turned him into one of the most talked-about young faces in Kerala this month. His name is Levin Paulose, and if you haven't seen his videos yet, chances are someone in your family group chat has already forwarded one.

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Meet Levin Paulose who built a robot from scrap heap

Rather than reaching for costly tools or complex machinery, Levin builds with whatever's lying around the house, cardboard, wires, string, nuts, bolts, batteries, combining them with small motors and basic parts to put together working models of his own design. No robotics kit, no fancy lab. Just a curious kid, a workbench, and apparently an endless supply of patience.

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The list of things he's built so far reads less like a school science project and more like a startup's product catalogue. There's a homemade device for fetching water, a machine that works like a vacuum cleaner, and a motorised curtain system that slides open and shut at the push of a button. Then there's the one that's won him the most fans among home cooks: an automatic stirrer that takes over at the stove so nobody has to hover over a pot of simmering curry, stirring it by hand for twenty minutes straight. Simple problem, cardboard solution.

The robot that does chores

His newest build, though, is the one that's really pushed him into viral territory, a humanoid robot, built almost entirely from cardboard that would otherwise have ended up in the recycling pile. It's not just for show, either. According to local reports, the robot actually pitches in around the house, helping his mother get through the daily grind of chores. There's something quietly moving about that detail, a kid engineering a helper for his own mum, out of nothing but garbage and imagination.

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A Praise from Kerala Chief Minister VD Satheesan

But the clip that really helped Levin’s name trend wasn’t one of his inventions in action. It showed him with Kerala Chief Minister V D Satheesan, who took the boy’s hand warmly, evidently struck by the ingenuity of what this schoolkid had managed to do with nothing but spare parts. It is that moment, more than any single gadget, that turned a local curiosity into a statewide talking point, and is said to have prompted online comparisons to a young APJ Abdul Kalam.

Ask Levin himself what's behind it all, and the answer isn't complicated. "With hard work, we can achieve anything," he's said,a line that's now doing the rounds as widely as his robots are.

It's easy to see why teachers, tech folks, and ordinary scrollers alike have latched onto this one. In an age when robotics conjures up images of expensive kits, coding bootcamps, and imported components, here's a kid proving the opposite, that a working machine can start with a cardboard box nobody wanted anymore. It's sustainability and STEM education rolled into one relatable package, minus the jargon.

Whether Levin ends up chasing engineering formally or simply keeps tinkering as a hobby, he's already handed a generation of kids scrolling past his videos a pretty useful lesson: you don't need a lab coat or a fat budget to start inventing. Sometimes all it takes is a torn-open box, a couple of spare screws, and the stubbornness to keep trying until the thing actually works.