Warangal: KITS comes up with low-cost tech solution to run vehicles remotely

A team of six members of the Kakatiya Institute of Technology and Science has developed a low-cost technology and successfully tested it in the initial stage by running a tractor.

Warangal: With a view to help farmers run their tractors and other vehicles remotely using GPS technology, a team of six members, including three faculty members and two students, of the Kakatiya Institute of Technology and Science (KITS) here has developed a low-cost technology and successfully tested it in the initial stage by running a tractor.

Speaking to ‘Telangana Today’, KITS Principal Prof K Ashoka Reddy said they had developed a ‘driverless automated tractor for farmers’ and were planning to commercialise the project after the final stage of testing.

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“The SEED (Science for Equity Empowerment and Development) division of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India (GoI) sanctioned a major research project titled ‘Automation of farming tools for smart farming using android application- A gaming approach’ to the department of Computer Science Engineering (CSE) and gave a grant of Rs.41 lakh. While Assistant Professor of CSE Md Sharfuddin Waseem is the principal investigator for the project, Prof P Niranjan Reddy, who is the Head, Department of CSE, is the co-investigator. Head of the Department of CSE (Networks) Prof S Narasimha Reddy is the mentor,” Prof Ashoka Reddy said.

The faculty members along with two students – Tharun and Saketh, both BTech final year students of CSE, worked on this project for three years and successfully developed the technology based on the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, GPS and Android application. “We have developed a mobile application to run the tractor in the field using a mobile phone, sitting at home or under the shadow of a tree near the field,” Waseem said.

Prof Niranjan Reddy said the technology could be used not only for ploughing land, but also for sowing the seeds in the farm.

“We embedded different kinds of sensors like proximity sensor, temperature sensor and soil moisture sensor to gather data from the live field and act accordingly to the situation. The ploughing machine identifies the obstacles via proximity sensor,” he added.

“This project is aimed to create low-cost automated tools for the benefit of the farmers and we would like to reduce human intervention while using the machines in the fields with these automated tools,” Prof Ashoka Reddy said, adding that an enhanced version of the technology could be used to even operate vehicles of Defence forces.

“We are also going to develop a centre to help the farmers in using the latest technologies in computer science and other departments,” the Principal said.

“These integrated automatic machines like the tractor developed by us are highly accurate and self-adjust when they detect differences in terrains, simplifying labor-intensive tasks. Their movements as well as work progress can be easily checked on smartphones. With advancements in IoT in Agricultural and Machine Learning (ML), these tech-driven motors are enabling Advanced farming using IoT independently with features such as automatic obstacle detection,” he said, adding that the cost to fit this technology to a tractor was just Rs 20,000.