At his make-shift innovation workshop at the nondescript village of Nenmara in Kerala's Palakkad district, Satheesh C, a young engineer, is in relentless pursuit of a gadget that can tackle Kerala's tallest challenge of the moment: To develop a robot to harvest coconuts , in the backdrop of a stinging dearth of coconut climbers.
Elsewhere in the state, several others are at work on the same problem: There's T Prakasan from Kozhikode, Babu G from Kollam, John Jose Pattery from Thrissur, and KR Rajan from Kochi, to name a few, all of who are in a race to take the Rs 1 million prize from the state government for a robotic device that will harvest coconuts.
Interest in the 'great coconut challenge' has been so intense that it has gripped the fancy of a few from outside the state as well. So there are innovators like SR Sankapal and Jagannath Raju from Bangalore who are also eyeing the million-rupee prize and a lot more moolah in future through commercial production of the successful palm-climbing robot.
The coconut challenge ignited the innovation bug among so many, that there were 468 who showed interest in developing a robot in the first round. "After primary assessment of the proposals, 109 were chosen and after further screening, we gave Rs 90,000 each to eight individuals whose proposals were rated the best", says Abdul Majeed, additional director of the state industries department.
The eight short-listed innovators and 13 others recently demonstrated their wares at the Kerala Agricultural University campus at Vellayani near here, where the results were not exactly found to be appropriate replacements for Kerala's traditional coconut climbers who have who have amazed locals and tourists with their nimble-footed work in going up and slithering down the majestic coconut palms.
But the innovators are in no mood to give up, and Satheesh in particular has his focus riveted on developing the gadget, for good reason. Satheesh, who completed his computer engineering from Thiruvanathapuram two years ago, runs a software development firm that employs two others at Kanjikode in Palakkad's industrial belt, and personally appreciates the need to replace human coconut climbers with robots.
[Source]
