Alappuzha: Abhijit Santhosh and Aswin Kumar, plus-two students of Nair Samajam Higher Secondary School in Mannar here, have developed an eco-friendly agro vehicle. The vehicle, made from scrap, works on solar energy and can be used for both agriculture and household work.
Aswin Kumar said an electric motor, a solar panel and a rechargeable battery were the devices which went into the making of the vehicle. It can be taken out by a driver and can move forward and back.
It can cut weeds and perform other basic farming needs. “We became aware of its mechanism from an article in a magazine and we discussed it for a month. We put the machine together with the help of my father, Sunil Kumar, an engineer with the Railways”, he said.
The main advantage of the vehicle is it can move forward and come back too. It can dig and plough hard as per the power of the solar panel which is set up on the roof of the vehicle and it charges the battery connected to the vehicle. When it’s off the field, the stored solar energy can be put to good use for household work.
Abhijit says they spent about Rs 5,000 to develop the vehicle. “We used old material to construct the body. It took a month to finish the main body. We introduced our vehicle to the public at the district science meet held last week and it won several accolades. We now plan to take it to the state meet as well”, he said.
“What we’re trying to do is to send the message of an eco-friendly machine. If we use such eco-friendly vehicles, we could save our resources and hand it over to the next generation. Our school has backed us to the hilt.
We plan to construct heavy eco-friendly vehicles on the same principle. We are confident of developing them so that people could utilize solar energy to the maximum instead of wasting electricity for farming and household needs”, he said.
