Fly Cocobot: A national recognition for ICAR-CCARI and Goa University

    Days are not far from doing away the drudgery in harvesting coconut in the times coming ahead and life threatening risk in harvesting coconut soon becomes a talk of yesteryears.  Fly–Cocobot, a drone based device, hovers around coconut palms and harvests coconuts at ease relieving the humans from life risk. Joint efforts for years, by ICAR-CCARI, Old Goa and Goa University have culminated in the development of a novel device, Fly-Cocobot” for replacing  manual harvesting of coconuts at a reasonable cost. A national level ‘Kritagya Agtech Hakhathon’ (Krishi Takaniki Gyan) was launched by NAHEP (National Agricultural Higher Education Project) of ICAR, during 2020, for promoting Farm Mechanization, in which a total of 784 teams across the country registered for showcasing their innovative concepts. Cutting across the stiff competition at multilevel screening, first at zonal level among 89 teams and then at the national level among 25 teams,  Fly-Cocobot, a technology solution presented by Goa team comprising of  Prof. Rajendra S. Gad of Goa University, Dr Adavi Rao Desai, Principal Scientist (Hort.), ICAR-CCARI, Old Goa, Mr Abhiraj Pednekar and Mr Arman Shaikh, the students, ranked for the first prize for its novelty, unique innovative concept and cost effective technical and practical feasibility solutions. In the national level virtual event on 31^st May 2021, The Fly Cocobot team received the award certificate and prize money of Rs. 5.0 lakhs, through hands of Shree Narendra Singh Tomar, Hon’ble Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers welfare, Govt. of India, in the presence of  Shri Parshottam Rupala and Shri Kailash Choudhary, Honourable ministers of state for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Govt. of India, Dr. T. Mohapatra, Secretary, DARE and DG, ICAR; Dr R C Agrawal, Dy. Director  General (Edn.) and other dignitaries. 

            Pragmatic uniqueness of the Fly Cocobot lies in its suitability for using in mixed cropping plantation of coconut and black pepper thereby leading for higher returns from coconut with pepper cropping system. “Padelis” (traditional coconut harvesters) generally avoid harvesting nuts in coconut-black pepper system for practical difficulty in climbing the coconut palms. Also, manned and unmanned devices, presently being used for harvesting coconut, are not compatible with the dual cropping system for which Fly cocobot is the excellent solution. Thus, technically, this novel device is a drone based remotely controlled unmanned gender friendly coconut harvesting machine for safe harvesting of coconuts. The prototype design could be even employed for harvesting in other palms like arecanut, palmyra palm, oil palm and date palm as well worldwide, besides its probable modification for other farm operations like spraying, pruning, etc.

            Functional beauty of the device is that, it flies to the top of the palm, gets attached to the trunk with grabbing arms, cutting arm then opens up for cutting the desired bunch decided through video displayed on screen of the remote module.  All this can be done from a safe distance without risking any human life, of course, by a trained person, without any gender bias.  The machine is conceptualized to have operational efficiency of 12-15 palms/ hour. CCARI and Goa University will jointly file the application for seeking patent for the novel design of the machine for protecting IPRs. With this technological solution, palm growers will have certainly a sigh of relief in the days ahead. Staff of ICAR-CCARI, Goa is extremely happy to receive this award and recognition.