Scientist develops robot, will help in Ganga rejuvenation
A professor of IIT Kanpur, who hails from Udaipur district in Rajasthan, has developed a duck-shaped robot that will play a key role in the Ganga rejuvenation.
“The overall objective of this project (robot) is to deliver a lowcost, autonomous real-time water quality-monitoring platform with auto sampling capabilities,” said Mangal Kothari, an assistant professor with the Aerospace Engineering Department of IIT-Kanpur.
Kothari hails from Falasia block of Udaipur district. He spent his initial years of schooling at Falasia and later went to Britain and US for further studies. He has developed the robot, along with his associates Prof Bishak Bhattacharya, Prof Indrashekar Sen and Prof Ketan Rajawat.
He said, “In the Indian subcontinent, cleaning and rejuvenating the Ganga river ecosystem is the focal point of all river basin management plans. However, the scientific community does not have sufficient skilled man-power for water sample collection and analysis, faces absence of real-time data and on demand auto-sampling capability.”
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“The only way forward to address these challenges is to develop a state-of-the-art in-situ river monitoring observatory that can provide real time data,” Kothari said, adding that the project has proposed to design and develop low-cost, multi-parameter, water quality platforms that would consist of several in-house developed sensors and auto sampling capability for durable and reliable real-time monitoring.
The project is sponsored by the Indo-Us Science & Technology Forum (IUSSTF). The robot, operated through solar energy, costs ₹20 lakh each. The water resources ministry has ordered 17 such robots that will be placed at 17 different locations along the Ganga river.