Project Overview

         Coconut production plays a key role in economic and cultural upliftment of many of India’s southern states. In fact the state of Kerala is widely known as ‘land of coconut trees’. Harvesting coconut is becoming a difficult task since many of the trained workers are no longer working and the current generation is showing little interest in this whole concept. Thus, the invention of new machines is extremely necessary in order to save coconut farming. The goal of this project is to create a coconut harvesting drone which will revolutionize the coconut production in many of India’s southern states particularly Kerala. The aim of this drone is to cut ripe coconuts. This drone will be a manually controlled quad-copter, consisting of a camera and sensors to determine whether the coconut is ripe or not. Some of technical challenges that we might face during the production of drone would be determining adequate amount of power for moving parts of the copter, finding appropriate sensor that can tell whether the coconut is ripe or not, and a capable robotic arm that can cut the coconuts. We believe that, with the help and guidance of the faculty and advanced engineers, this project could be successfully completed.

         Figure 1 shows a general layout of the different components of the Coconut Harvesting Drone. The drone will mainly hold the battery for the laser module and robotic arm, and the electrical components. Figure 2 shows the layout of the robotic arm, which holds the camera and laser module.

Figure 1: General layout of  the components

Figure 2: General Layout of  Robotic Arm