Automated coconut tree climber

Abstract

Agriculture, the prime sector is the backbone of India. Last few decades has witnessed a rapid development in robotic technology. Different kind of intelligent machines which facilitate various tasks in industry environment are becoming popular. India's contribution in coconut production in worldwide third place. All conventional techniques used for harvesting of coconuts was done manually and even if they developed any device it also required a human labor. Safety of the worker and the increased labor charges are the primary concerns of the coconut farm owners now. The factors such as height and coconut tree being branch less increased the difficult of climbing the tress. Only a professional climber having proper training could only be able to climb coconut tree. The risk involved in coconut tree climbing has reduced the people's count who come forward to climb the trees. The lack of professional climbers also stands as a reason for over charging by the existing professionals from the owner and as the educational background of Indian youth has increased the people now are hesitating to come into this type of profession. Today living in 21st century, still we have only manual coconut harvesting machines in handy. This in turn increases man power, cost of operation and time consumption for production. Thus, to overcome cons of manual harvesting process and to empower the agriculture in this domain an attempt has been made in designing a prototype of automated coconut harvesting machine. Considering this scenario, it will be very much helpful for the people if there is device which will help the user to climb a coconut tree. These kinds of devices will encourage more people to come forward into the agricultural sector. This project focuses in the design of a tree climbing robot which is automated, and thus this it does not require any human labor except to control it from the ground using a remote control. The device is a circular with a movable all sides and consists of four wheels. Four springs that are fixed to the wheel helps in adjusting to the variation in the tree's diameter. All the fixed wheels are having a DC motor geared with high torque for driving it. The four motors are driven in the bidirectional way using the four L293D drivers which are placed on the device's frame. The control signs for the driver is provided using a RF transmitter/receiver unit. A 12V 3000mah battery pack which is rechargeable is used. An arm with a rotary blade at its end is fixed to the track which is placed on the rim setup of this device so that arm can rotate on the rim in all direction for the coconuts harvest.