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AGRICULTURAL DRONE
In 2016 It all started with a strange facts and incidents that come across us -
1. Cancer Train - Punjab India
2. Health issue of a friends father whose occupation is paddy(rice) farming.
3. Practically trying to use farm equipment and manual sprayers made us realize how hard and uneasy are manual/mechanical sprayers used
Being passionate for solving problems and solution oriented, we started on as a team of 4 people.​
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Jumped onto grassroot level to understand the problem.
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Personally experienced the process of spraying pesticides by carrying the machine pesticide sprayer.
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Communicated with young and experienced farmers to take insights from them.
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Spent countless hours in internet, labs, workshops, with faculty to come to a best possible solution.
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On one exhaustive evening when we gathered in electrical machines lab and were watching helicopter pesticide spraying video on YouTube - a lab incharge suggested to develop smaller model of helicopter. Then an idea struck to build a DIY quadcopters and attach a small tank to it with sprinkler in the bottom.
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Designing for farmers who still dont understand how to use a smart mobile phone.
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In 2016 as quadcopters are very rare and are just emerging, we had to gather a lot of data from internet and order parts from Alibaba.
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Tested the concept with weight added, and when we are able to see this idea could potentially work, we started to develop better models and versions.
Image credits - https://www.pan-uk.org/key-issues/
The Workshop Innovation by Design - presented by IIM boosted our insights and views regarding product development, Impactful design.
After Our First model, we wanted to improve the model with qualities like more Flight time, more Pay Load and worked on multiple different ideas in that aspect.
Many unconventional ideas didn't work because of the basic flaws which made me to look into research outcomes of people around the world.
Through our Journey, one thing that we didn't have is money and equipment and we improvised, using sheet metal, locally available aluminum rods, plastic boxes as liquid containers. Getting our Requirements Machined from local workshops.
Not only failure is harsh, but it costs a ton. We had to improvise using files to remove material, testing the throttle and stability with single motor, using what ever we can to put the drone on.
Electrical Components, circuit and control board are the next most import part, we tried many things like used batteries resulted in burnt esc, sometimes motor and some other times entire battery on fumes.
After lots of hardships, Fopple in 2018 was enough capable to employ a few Employees and assemble final products for market.
Delivering Drones would create a festive moment in the entire village as people would flock to see the drones working, asking questions and coming with their requirements, it is always a great moment for me an engineer to get inputs for the future developments but also for possible other solutions and innovations.
We were fortunate enough to receive recognition for our works in National Level and received NIRDP Best Rural StartUp Award, RaithuNestham (friend of farmer award).
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