FarmBot: IIT Kharagpur’s Smart Robot for Crop Disease Detection

Revolutionizing smart farming, a groundbreaking innovation in agricultural automation has emerged from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur. Under the visionary leadership of Prof. Dilip Kumar Pratihar, a Semi-Automatic Tracked Mobile Manipulator cum Agricultural Robotic System has been successfully designed and developed by a team of PhD and project students. An India Patent has been granted to Prof. Pratihar, Mr. Pradeep Nahak, Mr. Atanu Jana, and others for the same.

Its an Advanced Agricultural Robot

This intelligent robotic system addresses recurring challenges faced by farmers in identifying plant diseases and ensuring appropriate and safe pesticide application.

Prof. Pratihar first introduced the concept of this advanced agricultural robot during his invited lecture at the 2018 National Seminar conducted by CDAC Kolkata, titled “Trends and Applications of ICT in Agriculture (TRACT).” Recognizing that agricultural terrains are neither entirely smooth nor completely rough, he proposed a tracked mobile manipulator as an ideal solution. The system features a serial manipulator—resembling a human hand—mounted on a tracked vehicle, designed specifically for field navigation and precision tasks.

While drone-based agricultural robots have gained popularity, they often struggle to capture high-quality images of plant leaves due to air turbulence created during flight, which results in noisy data. To overcome this limitation, the newly developed ground-based Tracked Mobile Manipulator uses camera-based image analysis for accurate disease detection, followed by automatic spraying of appropriate pesticides.

Funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, this development not only reduces health risks for farmers during manual pesticide spraying but also enhances food quality and agricultural productivity. By minimizing crop loss due to disease, the robot supports better yield and cost efficiency—contributing positively to the nation’s GDP.

The robot has been manufactured by an OEM named TECHNIDO, and a video showcasing its real-time field testing is available for public viewing.