Students create 'Chitti Robo' for farmers

Visakhapatnam: This solar-powered robot 'kisan bandhu bhagya' or multipurpose agricultural robot can handle multiple tasks such as sowing seeds, spraying fertilizers and pesticides, ploughing and watering fields all at once.

The project, developed by students of Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare Residential School (APSWR) – Centre of Excellence, Kommadi, not only finds place among the top 50 models in the NITI Aayog's ATL Tinkering Innovation Marathon but also drew the attention of child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner was all praise and appreciative of the dream project presented by the students at an interactive session recently held in New Delhi.

"Though five projects from across Andhra Pradesh got listed in the top 50, only we got a chance to interact with Kailash Satyarthi. We heard and read so much about him and never expected to meet him one fine day. We are yet to come out of the excitement," beam the students.

Designed by G Monika, a Class X student, KLSP Varshini and M Vinuthna Jignasha, Class IX students, assisted by their physical science teacher/ ATL in-charge T Rambabu, it took more than eight months for the students to come up with such an innovative concept.

These students have come with a multi-purpose prototype with the aid of robotics.

Monika, who hails from an agriculture family, says in fluent English that she has seen her father's drudgery ever since her childhood and the idea of creating a multipurpose agricultural robot stemmed from her father's harrowing experience in the field.

"Moreover, it is eco-friendly, cost-effective, reduces drudgery, saves time and more importantly it aids in bringing down instances of farmers' suicide as their job is made easy.

The only disadvantage is that since it is solar-powered, the robot cannot operate in all seasons," reasons Vinuthna Jignasha, whose father is an agricultural labourer.

Today, the girls have more reasons to cheer as their prototype model is all set to be developed into a real time application for practical use at Atal Incubation Centre, MIT Art Design and Technology University, Pune.

"Initially, there were 2,000 participants from across the nation for the ATL Tinkering Innovation Marathon. Of them, ours got shortlisted in the top 200, then gradually it inched towards the top 100 and now it cropped up in the top 50 projects. We just could not believe our luck that our eight-month-long effort finally yielded results," shares Varshini.

School Principal S Rupavathi and teacher Rambabu say that the students of the school have bagged several awards in science fairs in the last six years. "These students are from rural areas. So far, they never boarded the train and are quite thrilled to fly to New Delhi and next to Pune on September 23," they add.