Kharagpur: IIT Kharagpur's mechanical engineering department has unveiled a robot that can identify plants with diseases and apply pesticides in farms. The team had earlier developed a railway track inspection robot. Apart from preventing crop losses, thereby enhancing yield, the Union ministry of electronics and information technology-funded project also aims to reduce farmers' health risks from manual pesticide spraying.Dilip Kumar Pratihar and his team of PhD and project students, including Pradeep Nahak and Atanu Jana, have developed the semi-automatic tracked mobile manipulator-cum-agricultural robotic system that has secured an Indian Patent for this intelligent system. The concept was initially introduced by Pratihar at a CDAC Kolkata National Seminar in 2018, titled "Trends and Applications of ICT in Agriculture (TRACT)".After receiving the funding the following year, a patent was filed in 2019, but was finally granted in 2024."Considering the varied nature of agricultural terrain, we have developed a tracked mobile manipulator featuring a serial manipulator mounted on a tracked vehicle, designed for precise field operations. Unlike drone-based agricultural robots that struggle with image quality due to air disturbance, this ground-based system utilises camera-based image analysis for precise disease detection and automated pesticide application," Pratihar said.The robot, weighing 50 kg-60 kg can cover 3 m of farmland in a minute, stopping to inspect the condition of crops, assessing the kind of damage caused by pests by analysing a photo of the crop, selecting the type of pesticide required, operating a pump to spray the pesticide, and move ahead.The robot is capable of carrying three types of pesticide in three tanks of 4-litre capacity each. The AI robot can rotate 360° and spray the chemicals all around. It is fitted with a battery that can last 1.5 hours when fully charged.