IIT-KGP develops vehicle with mechanised broom to clean public places

    Kolkata, May 29 (PTI) A group of researchers at IIT
Kharagpur has developed a vehicle with mechanised broom that
runs on battery and solar power to clean roads and public
places, an official said on Friday.
    The vehicle, named Sammarjak MB 4.2, uses two
mechanised brooms and has been successfully tested across the
2,100 acre campus of the institute during the ongoing
lockdown.
    IIT-Kharagpur director Prof Virendra K Tewari has
planned to deploy it on campus as the authority expects to
face a shortage of cleaning staff, a spokesperson of the
institute said.
    Talking about the current labour situation on the
campus, Tewari said, "We had restricted entry of a significant
section of the workforce to our campus from late March.
Further, we have reassigned some cleaning staff towards
sanitising the key areas on the campus.
    "But considering the size of our campus, we need a
substantial number of sanitation workers, and this gap is
being filled by automated brooming system across all the
pathways."
    Prof Mihir Sarangi, who led the innovation, said the
system is highly flexible and can be deployed to clean roads.
    "Being an indigenously-built technology, we kept in
mind the steep curves and undulations of Indian streets and
made the brooms adjustable vertically and horizontally," he
said.
    Sarangi said the researchers use solar power charging
system in addition to the battery to keep the running cost of
the vehicle low. PTI SUS
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(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)