Robotic Solution to disinfect food has won Food and Agribusiness Prize. The project was presented at the MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize Competition. And the prize is called the Rabobank MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize. The project-cum-solution competition aims to provide a robotic solution to disinfect food. And the name of the robotic drone used in Project Dynamics is “Drobot”. It rovers over fields to spray soap and disinfectant. There was a sheer need to mitigate the problem of the labor crisis. And the team intends to fulfil these labor shortages and thus solve the existing sanitation problems.
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Robotic Solution to disinfect food- The research
Now, Tom Okamoto is a co-founder of the research and the study and a master’s student in MIT’s System Design and Management (SDM) program. The other researchers involved in the project are Takahiro Nozaki, Julia Chen, Mike Mancinelli, and Kaz Yoshimaru. He quotes, “They have to sanitize every night, and it’s extremely labor-intensive and expensive”. He also reveals that the average cost of sanitization that a food producer spends nearly comes out to be $13 million. But the Human Dynamics project claims to solve an $80 billion problem. And it is because it tackles the dual problem of time consumption and delays due to human error.
Quadcopter drone:
The quadcopter drone has a tank, a nozzle, and a spray hose. Because, it makes the best use of visual detection technology, a LIDAR, and an algorithm to track the route, the project is a promising one. The project will not only automate the repetitive process but will also complement the manual cleaning process. Now, the team is already run the first stage of the project’s production. Also to add, the second prize went to the project called, “Resourceful”. And this project intends to establish a connection between the buyers and sellers of food waste exhausts. It does so with the help of an online platform.