Agriculture Minister Kurasala Kannababu on Sunday inaugurated ‘Bandicoot’, a four-leg robot which would clean sewer manholes in Kakinada city in East Godavari district.
The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has pledged to donate two robots of which one was presented on Sunday. ONGC ED Asset Manager (Kakinada) Arvind Morbale, Kakinada MP Vanga Geetha and Kakinada Municipal Corporation Commissioner Swapnil Dinakar were present on the occasion.
The cost of each robot, developed by Kerala-based technology firm ‘Genrobotics’, is ₹45 lakh which includes training cost of the operators for a year.
Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Kannababu said the robots would replace the manual operations undertaken to clean the sewer manholes in the city.
The robot has features including poisonous gas detector, diving range of eight meters and three cameras that go into the manholes during the cleaning operation.
In India, Kakinada has become the 15th city to adopt robot technology in its machine sanitation wing. The ONGC is donating the robots as part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative.