Students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have developed a "smart agricopter" to eliminate manual spraying of pesticides in agricultural fields and help identify crop health by using an imaging camera. The innovation will allow spraying pesticides ten times faster and with 100 percent precision at the same cost as manual spraying.

Purpose behind Invention

1.Manual pesticide spraying is extremely hazardous

Students at the Centre For Innovation, IIT Madras, identified manual pesticide spraying as an extremely hazardous activity as it endangered farmers' and laborers' health and resulted in a massive overuse of toxic chemicals.

2.A technological solution designed to prevent farmers to come in direct contact with pesticides

The team of three students set out to design a technological solution that would eliminate the need for farmers to come in contact with pesticides as well as intelligently identify which crops on the farm require pesticides and which did not.

Exploring About Hexacopter

• "What really sets agricopter apart from existing products is the multispectral imaging camera which provides smart analysis of crop health and ensures that the entire spraying process is completely autonomous and that the farmer is never exposed to the pesticide.
• "The current version of Project Smart Agricopter is a hexacopter drone with the capacity to carry 15 liters of pesticide.
• Agricopter aims to spray pesticides 10 times faster and with 100 percent precision at the same cost as manual spraying," said Kavi Kailash, another aerospace engineering student.
• Cost of agricopter estimated to be around Rs. 5.1 lakh.The three have also filed a patent for the agricopter whose cost is estimated to be around Rs 5.1 lakh.

Proved Worthy

The team has also got a Rs 10 lakh worth equity-less funding after their product won the Indian Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP 2.0) University Challenge held at IIT Bombay last month.