Robot To Resolve Labour Issues In Cotton Farming
A visit to a cotton farm and learning about the labour shortage issue impacting farmers, four university students were encouraged to develop a rover robot which will help farmers in sowing, weeding, pesticide spraying, and finally harvesting.
Four students from the Institute of Aeronautical Engineering in Hyderabad have designed a prototype named CultivOx by Agrodroid, a rover robot, designed to automate and simplify cotton farming activities from sowing to harvesting.
“Since the last 10 years, Indian farmers are struggling to find labour to undertake various farming activities, despite paying higher wages,” the New India Express stated.
CultivOx promises to reduce manual labour dependency and is also completely solar-powered and CO2-neutral technology.
The prototype aligns with the timeline of cotton cultivation, ensuring that it collects crucial data at different stages of cotton plant growth.
The collected data will be used to fine-tune their prototype, which is expected to be ready for field testing in December 2023.
The final product which has been recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) of the Government of India, complete with certifications, is slated for launch in July of 2025.
