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Amazing Agripod brings tech success

Many congratulations to of our Year 12 students, Lucas H, Ali K and Aditya M, who have this week enjoyed conspicuous recognition of their inventiveness. Their ‘Agripod’ has made them winners of ‘Best Innovation’ as well as 'Working Well with Industry' in the national Teen Tech competition as well as winners of Siemens Digital Decarbonisation Award, and Runners-up in the Senior Engineer Award at the Big Bang Science Fair in Birmingham.

 

The boys explain:

The AgriPod is an innovative agricultural sensor. Designed to tackle fertiliser misapplication in northern India, our cloud-based model processes real-time soil data gathered by AgriPod and sends recommendations to local farmers via SMS. 

"Fertiliser misapplication has detrimental effects on the environment and local communities; fertiliser runoff increases costs for farmers and contaminates water sources. 

Our research and feasibility tests, including a lab experiment to optically determine nitrogen levels in soil, culminated in the design of a prototype - following planned requirements. Server-side, we’ve written algorithms capable of modelling the moisture levels of a large area, from a small number of sensors.

AgriPod has gathered keen interest from numerous academics. In our target region, the project has attracted the attention of local farmers, NGOs and the Indian Ministry of Agriculture. Our project concept has been shown to be feasible; we plan to complete, and trial, a full system prototype in the coming months."