With no safety gear beyond a strap of palm frond tied around his ankles, the coconut plucker launches himself onto the tree’s arcing trunk, which rises dozens of feet into the air. With a swift series of spider-like manoeuvres, he is at the top of the tree within seconds, slicing the nuts from their stems with a heavy blade he carries tucked into his loincloth.
One misstep and he would surely fall, as much as 100 feet to the ground! Plucking coconuts is a dangerous job that requires experience and judgment. The nuts ripen at different times, and trained climbers have to decide whether a nut is ready to be plucked. India produces 15 billion coconuts a year, a tropical bonanza that feeds a billion-dollar industry.
Just about every coconut is plucked by hand. Now, students pursuing engineering are harnessing the power of robotic technology to simplify a dangerous task like coconut tree climbing and coconut plucking. In....
