Thursday, April 17, 2014

Boy rescued from Borewell using indigenous borewell Robot in India



 In my previous post, I had listed various amazing Robots. All those Robots were developed by properly trained people, and with lot of funds from big corporations and U.S Military.

In this post, I would like to mention about a really amazing Robot developed by an ITI Fitter in India.


Few days back, a 3 years old boy "Harshan" fell into an unprotected borewell near Sankarankovil, Tirunelveli District at Tamil nadu state in India.

The boy was rescued safely from the borewell using the "borewell robot", an indigenous device developed by 43-year-old M Manikandan and his team.


M Manikandan is an ITI educated fitter, and now he is working as a faculty in TVS Community College in Madurai.  Manikandan says it took him several years to develop the 'robot', the trigger for which was his own son's accidental fall into a borewell in 2003 and rescue.
 

An ITI educated fitter and now working as a faculty in a college which imparts vocational training to rural people, the 43-year old says it took him several years to develop the 'robot', the trigger for which was his own son's accidental fall into a borewell in 2003 and rescue. Explaining the device, he said the 'robot' is actually a two feet high simple iron framework weighing just five kg. It has a hook on its top to enable its suspension through a rope deep into borewells.

The device has a high resolution camera which can take pictures even in pitch dark conditions and arms which are detachable.

It can lift weight upto 50 KGs. The pictures can be seen on a computer monitor. "In Tirunelveli, we first tried the rubber arms... but the child kept pushing it away probably out of fear... then I used the clamp arms which clutched the child and thankfully we were able to rescue the child."

Asked if the child would not get hurt if the arms clutched it too closely, he said a pressure guage continuously monitors the pressure exerted by the arms and the victim's response.

According to him, this Robot will not cost more than Rs. 60,000 (i-e Around $1,000 USD).

In 2006, IIT-M Chennai awarded him for the invention, while he was handed over a certificate by the Tuticorin district collector at a function held in 2007.

The team consists of M Thirunavukkarasu, another faculty from the college, M Vallarasu, an engineering graduate doing his business and P Rajkumar, a driver.



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