IIT Kharagpur, C-DAC developing robot for spraying pesticides in agricultural fields

The robot, when fully developed, will be able to move around in a farm, take photographs of plants, diagnose any disease, select an appropriate pesticide from its tank and spray it on that particular plant.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) Kolkata is coordinating a multi-body project to develop a robot essential for spraying pesticides in agricultural fields. The project is been funded by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The robot, when fully developed, will be able to move around in a farm, take photographs of plants, diagnose any disease, select an appropriate pesticide from its tank and spray it on that particular plant, said Prof Dilip Kumar Pratihar of IIT-Kharagpur, which is one of the institutions working on the project.

The aim is to develop a tracked mobile manipulator that will enable the robot to negotiate the rough terrain in the field. The machine main feature is its camera that will take pictures and process the photographs to detect any disease in a plant, Pratihar told a media house.