C-DAC, IIT-Kharagpur developing robot for pesticide spraying

The Centre for Progress of State-of-the-art Computing (C-DAC), Kolkata, is coordinating a multi-body undertaking, funded by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Details Engineering, to establish a robot fundamentally for spraying pesticides in agricultural fields.

The robot, when entirely created, will be capable to transfer close to in a farm, just take photos of crops, diagnose any ailment, select an proper pesticide from its tank and spray it on that specific plant, claimed Prof Dilip Kumar Pratihar of IIT-Kharagpur, which is a person of the institutions doing the job on the undertaking.

The plan is to establish a ‘tracked cell manipulator’ which will help the robot to negotiate the tough terrain in the field. The device will aspect a digicam that will just take pictures and course of action the photos to detect any ailment in a plant, Pratihar explained to BusinessLine right now.

When the robot detects a ailment in a plant it will get to it, select an proper pesticide or drugs from its tank and spray it on that plant, claimed Pratihar, the project’s Principal Investigator.

It is a two-12 months undertaking, which is now fifty percent way, he claimed. The pandemic has delayed factors a little bit, but Pratihar is self-confident that the undertaking will be done within the allotted time. All but the spraying technique of the device has been created. Assembly and tests will just take place as before long as the lockdown disorders strengthen, he claimed.

Some suppliers have demonstrated desire in getting up the merchandise for generation, he claimed but did not would like to identify them.

Pratihar, author of a book titled Comfortable Computing, which promotions with genetic algorithms, fuzzy logic and neural networks, is the founder of the Centre for Excellence in Robotics at IIT-Kharagpur. The centre is doing the job on various other robotics-similar jobs, much too, like on drones, 6-legged robots and humanoid robots.

The professor is involved in creating controls for a lifetime-sized humanoid robot, which can wander on plain floor and on slopes and climb up and down stairs, and has applications in defence. The undertaking, coordinated by the Shastri Indo Canada Institute, is a pretty intricate undertaking as the robot would have “35 levels of freedom”, or 35 independently performing variables.

“Lot of mathematics is involved,” Pratihar claimed.