Students develop robot that can automate weeding in small farms

The biggest problem affecting most farm and plot owners is the unwanted weeds. They are stubborn and a strong labour force is required to remove them. It takes days of physical labour to uproot weeds entirely from the soil. 

“We were approached by the owners of a private farm in Hosur who wanted us to help them find a solution,” says Sneha Priya of SP  Robotic Works that also runs Kidobotikz, where regular classes on robotics are held for children. “Upon researching, we found that that these weeds were affecting the produce. The owners of the farm mentioned that they finding labourers is a challenge. These weeds have to be removed from the root, if not they will grow immediately. We had to make a machine that would mechanically unearth these weeds which affect the crop produce if not cleared properly,” she adds. 

Eight school children, C Rohith, Navin Arul, A Sendhan, S Sanjayan, Omar Khalid Fakrul Kareem, TK Vishnu S Manojkumar, Abishek Shankar and N Trigun were selected for the project. 

“We had just one month to build a system that could be handled easily but equipped with strong blades to remove unwanted plants. Our idea was to replicate the effect of a man using a spade on our robot. We had one month to work on it,” says Sneha. 

Students from Kidobotikz have already built a robot called Swacchbot that was used to operate on sand and collect garbage. Explaining the difference between the two, Sneha says, “Swachh bot had to move on sand, the challenge was to make the robot move and drag the litter along, by using the battery efficiently.” 

When it came to building the ‘Agri- bot, the first challenge was to work on a mechanism to make “The spikes dig deep enough,” says Sneha. “The machine is beta version and we are still working on making it better. It is still not digging deep enough to uproot the weeds properly. We are working on it. We plan to hold the next testing in two weeks. We also asked a person not into robotics to handle the remote and he faced no difficulty. So that’s half the battle won,” she adds. 

They are also working on making it cost- effective. “The machine cannot be very expensive as we are solving a grass roots level problem. Here we aim to save three man days (3 people working for 1 whole day) with merely two hours of operation by this robot,” she adds.