A robot to help grow your veggies at home

What if a robot could tell you exactly how much water, humidity and sunlight was needed to keep your green friends healthy and happy? An innovative summer camp to be held in the city, Agrobotics Summer Camp ’19, is set to teach children above class 3 how to build a bot, which can monitor plant health, and grow their own vegetables using it.

The six-day workshop for kids, starting April 29, will be held across 10 locations in the city by educational research firm Sciencotonic and the Chennai Robotics Club. “As part of the workshop, we will be providing kits to the children using which they will be taught to make a robot or a device, which will help create a greenhouse with suitable conditions for a plant’s growth — including the right humidity levels, light and temperature. The idea behind the camp is to bring in practical education for school and college students,” explains the two-year-old startup Sciencotonic’s founder Narendran Asokan.

Using the device, one can make plants even like watermelon (traditionally a winter crop) grow at home round the year. “With disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and drones being used in agriculture, which might change the crop patterns, there is a need to be able to grow our own food,” asserts Narendran. On the last day of the camp, children will implement their learnings in robotics and agriculture by planting 400 saplings and creating an automated green house for them at Anna University.

“Students at the university will also be engaged in the initiative, wherein they will try to create a digital platform which enables all green houses in a particular geographical location to be tracked, and also provide information on the history of each of the crops grown,” he adds.