Kota Teen’s AI robot helps farmers assess soil health, crop water
Kota: A teenager in Rajasthan’s Kota has built an all-purpose robot to help farmers assess soil and crop health, their water needs and detect pests.
Aryan Singh, 17, built Agrobot, a central government initiative to help school children hone their building skills, at his school’s Atal Tinkering Lab. The son of a farmer, Aryan spent four years building the robot, which won him the Prime Minister’s National Children’s Award under the Science and Technology category.
Aryan was the only boy from Rajasthan to win the award among nine boys and ten girls from 18 states and union territories. He received this award from President Draupadi Murmu on 22 January this year in New Delhi. “I come from a farming family, grew up watching my grandparents and parents work in the fields. While studying in 10th class, I came up with the idea of developing a multi-tasking tool and later developed a prototype that can reduce the labor of farmers in the field,” Aryan told PTI. The boy sent his proposal to NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, who is an MP from Rajasthan, as well as then Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar, who praised his device.
“Agrobot is capable of performing multiple tasks like harvesting, irrigation, loading, soil-tracking, etc.,” Aryan said. He has received more than 15 national and international awards and appreciation for his innovation, he said. Although the prototype cost him Rs 50,000 to manufacture, “it will cost less if manufactured in larger numbers,” he said. The boy as well as his mentor at SR Public School in Kota are hopeful that Agarbot will be in the market within a year. The initial funding for the robot came from iStart, a flagship initiative of the Rajasthan government for startups.
“They incubated me and I got a work space, a lab, and support from them,” Aryan said. AgRobot is equipped with cameras to analyze the condition of the crop. There is also a dropper on the top which helps in spreading seeds and irrigation in the field, thereby reducing the physical labor the farmer has to do. The robot is also equipped with soil moisture sensors that help farmers assess the health of the soils and detect any pests in them. The robot uses artificial intelligence that is trained on various agricultural data, he said. It can also be controlled remotely. “By using IoT, we have made the robot remotely controllable. For example, if you want to use the robot from Jaipur city and your crops are in Kota, you can simply log in to the application that I have developed and use it,” said Aryan.
