Robot developed by Kerala youth to plough, bed soil & pluck weeds in farms

This Kerala youth is gearing up to transform the farming sector with a small robot called “Thrive” which can plough, bed the soil and even pluck weeds. Developed by 28-year-old Prince Mamman, the founder of Freeman Robots in Punalur, Kollam, Thrive has cleared the pro-type testing at College of Agriculture, Vellayani and is now into the final stage of product development before being launched in the market.

Though paucity of funds has slowed down Research and Development, Prince, a Mechatronics engineer from Salem College of Engineering, is confident that his rechargeable battery-powered robot will be the best friend of farmers who are into large scale vegetable cultivation and floriculture. “I developed Thrive after enrolling myself as an agri-entrepreneur with Kerala Agricultural University (KAU). Currently, my firm is incubated with Makers Village. As a proto-type, Thrive has cleared the necessary tests for further development,” Prince told “Open Digest.”

Prince said his startup was looking to raise some funds close to Rs 18 lakhs so that they could launch “Thrive” in the market by July 2023. “We are into the development of two versions of Thrive. While the first one will be remote controlled, the second one will be fully automated. As the production cost for fully automated one is high, we are focusing on launching the remote controlled version first that can be integrated with an android app for its operation.

According to Prince, Thrive has software based augmented features which enables it to plough the field and prepare the soil for planting the crops. “We can use it in farms where crops are planted in lanes for cultivating vegetables like tomato, ladies’ finger, green and red chillies and brinjal. We can also use it in fields where flowers are grown in large number,” he said adding that Thrive, which is expected to be priced between Rs 70,000 and Rs one lakh, has a software embedded with a camera that can be programmed to identify a particular crop and can be given command to pluck other plants mainly weeds growing amidst the crop.