VIJAYAWADA: Krishna district administration is keen on automating the garbage collection process from households. If all goes well, people may soon witness robots in front of their houses instead of sanitation workers.A team of 10 students from IIIT Nuzvid have developed a robot that can collect both wet and dry garbage and put them in their respective bins. They on Sunday will showcase the prototype’s functionalities before the collector and other district officials.

They have developed the project under the green ambassadors programme and it took them just 60 hours to develop it completely. The administration, which was impressed by the idea, will conduct a trial run in Komaravolu and, if successful, will introduce fully-functional bots in the village on a pilot basis.

These students explained their creation: “The bot, powered by batteries, is more like a tricycle, which has separate compartments for dry and wet waste. After it reaches a specific house, sirens will alert the inmates about its arrival. The bot will then recognise the colour of the dustbin, collect the trash accordingly and move to the next house. After completing its target collection, the segregated garbage will be given to a solid waste management plant.”

Mohammad Jalaluddin, a third year student of the ECE branch who was involved in the project’s development, said, “It took 60 hours for my team to develop this prototype. Our faculty has helped us to a great extent for this project. I am from a poor family; my father who used to work as a transport contractor passed away in 2018. My family is my inspiration which supports me in everything that I do. Since childhood, robotics has been something that caught my fancy.”

Commenting on this, Collector B lakshmikantham said: “Our thrust is towards making villages smart with the use of technology. We have developed solid waste management plants across the district. We will soon implement this project once we get the fully-functional models ready.”