Inventors smooth out coconut rough

Three winners, whose machines most effectively ascend the coconut tree and harvest the nuts, will each receive approximately $30,000. Photo / Brett Phibbs

When C Satheesh was a child, his father would slip away from the family home every morning at dawn to pick coconuts.

It was arduous work. Some days his father would climb 50 trees for less than 150 rupees ($4.50). And it was unforgiving on the body; his joints ached, his back constantly hurt. A fall could have been fatal.

So last year, when the state government of Kerala said it would run a competition, Satheesh, 28, a computer engineering graduate who runs his own software company, took notice.

The contest was to devise a machine that could ascend a coconut tree and harvest the nuts, thereby doing away with the need for human climbers.

Today, Satheesh's machine, designed with his father's help, will be one of eight shortlisted from 450 entrants to be tested in a two-day government trial. Three winners, whose machines most effectively scale the tree and complete the task, will each receive 1m rupees ($30,000).

A government official said the coconut was one of Kerala's most important products and every part of the tree is used.

Traditionally, the harvesting of Kerala's coconuts was a task for members of the lower caste thiyya clan.

But in Kerala, which enjoys higher literacy rates educational opportunities than in most Indian states, a younger generation has grown up less inclined to climb trees.

The result is an estimated 15 per cent shortfall in the number of climbers required to harvest the state's annual crop. Hence the Government decided to run the competition to develop a mechanical device.

India grows 15 billion coconuts a year and the Coconut Development Board, in the port city of Kochi, claims that the average Indian family uses 30 coconuts a month.

They are eaten, their liquid is drunk, their flesh is used to make shampoo and oil. In Kerala, coconut is also distilled into a fiery toddy while the fibre is used for matting. The nuts are worth more than $23.2bn to the nation's economy. But every coconut is still picked by hand.

Inspired by the challenge of building a machine that could end the need for the toil of climbers such as his father, Satheesh set his ingenuity to work. The result is a robot that "climbs the tree like a human being", with hooks instead of hands and feet. His 1.2m-long aluminium and steel contraption employs a mechanical arm to cut the coconut.

"The machine is all right. But there are still some fixes that need to be done to it," he said. "When it is cutting the coconut, it takes a long time. So there needs to be some changes."

In the days before the contest, Satheesh has been busy fine-tuning his design, determined to try to win, determined to ensure that Kerala can continue to enjoy the benefits of the coconut without the need for human harvesters.

- The Independent