A ‘Roboat’ for pollution testing?
A group of engineering students in Kerala has designed and developed a boat that can test the pollution level in rivers, without having the further need of heading to a laboratory.
Fenboat, a tiny boat devised by the students of Cochin College of Engineering and Technology, Valancherry, and MES College of Engineering, Kuttippuram, is a remote-controlled unmanned innovation that can collect around 60 water samples in a minute.
Assembled under a budget of ₹2 lakh, the boat has a built-in GPS Device for location tracking.
It is also equipped with a GSM module that can send SMSes, and a camera for taking live photographs.
One standout feature of Fenboat is its ability to instantly test pollution levels in the river while it is on-board, thus eliminating the reliance on laboratories and time-lag based errors that often crop up between collection of samples and subsequent testing.
The battery-run boat can also provide details like water temperature, pH level, biological oxygen, chlorine and nitrogen demand through its testing.
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Guided by Muhammed Shamnaz, who is the HOD of Mechanical Department, Cochin College and Arun George, an Ocean Technology expert, the team of innovators behind Fenboat includes Irfan Vakkayil, Sharundas, Sadiq Melethil, AP Shajahan, Prashyam G Nair, Shijith Chelur, E B Parthasarathy, P Abhijith, E P Anand, P Vishnubhargav, K Sharuq and Fasal Ur Rahman.
Starting with a test run on Poovanchina lake in Puthanathani, the boat will soon run a demonstration in Bharatapuzha river, as told to Mathrubhumi by Parthasarathy, one of the team members.