Shalini Saksena catches up with the designer of cocobot — a robot that plucks coconuts from the trees in Kerala — on how the idea came & what is its commercial viability
Visit any coastal region in India and the sight that greets is rows and rows of coconut trees with the fruit nestled high up in its long pinnate leaves. Why is it that there is so much fruit hanging high up when the price of the fruit is not less than Rs 40IJ The answer is simple. Coconut pluckers (thandan) are a rarity. This is because the son doesn’t want to take on this ageold profession which pays so little. With around 5,000-7,000 people left who know how to climb and pluck the coconut in the country, it means that one will find more trees with fruits on them than not.
Believe it or not, the country produces over 15 billion coconuts in a year and every single coconut is plucked by hand. This means climbing the almost 100 feet tall tree with just a coir rope to make the loop. To say that this traditional ageold practice of taking the fruit down is risky. A misstep could mean a straight fall 100 feet down.
Therefore, there was a need to come up with an alternative. Interestingly, the idea was sown by a coconut plucker from Kerala who came forward with his dismal financial condition. While they were much in demand, the risks involved were too great in comparison to the money that they were being paid — Rs 75 to Rs 100 per tree.
Dr Rajesh Kannan Megalingam, director of HuT labs, Amrita University in Kerala, which is called the land of coconut palms, tells you that a coconut plucker came forward and narrated his story on how in case he sustained an injury while high up on a coconut tree, his family would starve as it had no other means of income. “This got us thinking and the result is the prototype that you see today — cocobot. It took us time to first understand what the bot had to do and how to design it so that it could climb a tree with the controls in the hands of the person standing below,” Megalingam says, adding that in Kerala the dearth of thandans is because the State has such a high literacy rate that GenX wants a job in an MNC and not climb a tree which is dangerous and pays little.
It took them around three years before they finally, in 2016, came out with the prototype that could climb a coconut tree and cut the fruit. It has eight wheels — four on the top and four below like in a car. With a rotatory cutter, the bot cuts the entire bunch rather than a single coconut to save time. The camera fitted on the arm helps the person below identify which bunch to cut.
“It took us time because the parts are not available in India and had to be imported from China. We gave our specifications which are then manufactured and sent. The customs in India take two to three weeks to clear. Besides time consuming, the parts are expensive too. Each actuator that helps the bot to move costs anywhere between $300 to $800. The bot has eight in the body and six in arm. This means that its commercial value would be over Rs 2 lakh, not something that a coconut plucker can afford to buy,” Megalingam explains.
He tells you that they are still working on the bot to make it cheaper — Rs 1 lakh — by manufacturing the parts in-house. Also, the designers and engineers are working to remodel the bot so that it can climb a tree that is bent. At present, the bot can only climb straight trees. The problem will arise if a coconut tree is bent. “Usually, one will find one bent in 2000 trees and the bot can’t climb this for now,” Megalingam says.
“The team is also working to reduce the time the bot takes to climb. “It takes 10 minutes as opposed to a person who takes less than two minutes. Once we have ironed out all these problems, this should be in the next few months, the bot will be ready for commercial production,” Megalingam says and adds that they have already applied for a patent and are in talks with manufacturers in Karnataka, Maharashtra and even Thailand which has shown interest in its commercial production.