Agriculture is a lifeline for rural communities, providing sustenance for its residents to eat and live off of. In India, crop yields have been impacted by plant diseases, which impedes on a vital source of food. When these diseases impact one part of an orchard, it can easily spread, hurting the yield. Unfortunately, it can be very labor intensive and time consuming for farmers to manually remove fallen diseased fruit and prevent spread. To help combat this issue, a team of students at the Manipal Institute of Technology in Manipal, India have created a mobile robot for collecting fallen fruits and a fruit sorting system to differentiate healthy and diseased fruits.
The team, in collaboration with Yuva Bengaluru Trust and College of Agricultural Engineering in Bangalore have created a device that is meant to support farmers in India and create a healthier crop yield for the benefit of those who live in rural areas. The robot will have a navigation unit with several control functions, a fruit recognition unit that uses a camera, a robotic arm that acts as a fruit picker, and a power unit.
As part of this project as well, training will be provided to the famers and workers that would be using the device to make using it more accessible.
This project was made possible by a grant of $6,180.00 by EPICS in IEEE.