Students of a government-run school in Prakasam district demonstrated their aptitude for problem-solving by offering technology-driven solutions to issues faced by farmers.
Two girls, J.V. Mrudula and Ch. Maheswari, daughters of farmers, wanted to come up with a solution for crop damage caused by marauding animals such as wild elephants. With the help of the Atal Tinkering Lab (ATL) at their school, the girls set about building a prototype called Cattle Alert System in Agriculture and presented it at a workshop for ATL teachers at an event conducted at Aravinda High School in Tadepalli on Thursday.
“The prototype consists of Passive Infrared Radiation (PIR) sensors, an open-source electronics platform called Arduino, and buzzers that scare cattle and lasers that help shoo away birds,” said the girls’ mentor S. Madhava Rao.
Mrudula and Maheswari are Class X students of Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare School at Pedapavani in Prakasam district.
Encouraged by their principal Ch. Sujatha and mentored by Mr. Rao, the duo developed the prototype using only the resources that were available at the ATL.
“The project will be adopted by Sri Krishnadevaraya University in whose incubation centre it would be further developed into a real-time affordable device,” Mr. Rao said. The project also found a place in the Top 50 innovations at the Tinker Marathon conducted by Niti Aayog recently.
While this is one project that earned recognition, many such projects have been prepared by students of various social welfare schools in the State. The same were displayed during the visit of School Education Commissioner K. Sandhya Rani on Wednesday.
Creative platform
“ATL has become a creative platform for students who have been experimenting with sensors and other devices to give shape to their ideas to solve societal problems, which is the basic concept of ATL,” said AHS principal B. Indirani.
O. Phanindra, a student of AHS, came up with a simple solution to reduce the burden of jerks at speed-breakers on the roads.
“In the conventional model of speed-breakers, motorists, particularly motorcyclists, have to take pressure on their back due to sudden braking. In the model, I proposed small gaps in the speed-breakers.
“Motorcyclists will have to slow down but can pass through the gaps without any jerks,” Phanindra explained.
