30 Jan 2023  |   06:37am IST

This band of boys are out to make a difference

Working with a limited budget and time frame, they have developed a solution to Goa's never-ending pothole conundrum

Rohan Shrivastav

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PANJIM: When creative and innovative young minds work together, the results are always surprising. A shining example of this is a group of five students of the department of mechanical engineering at Agnel Institute of Technology and Design, Assagao, which has developed a cost-effective, semi-automatic pothole-filling machine.

Realising that the government's currently used pothole-filling mechanism is not only expensive but also time-consuming and labour intensive, five Bachelor of Engineering (BE) students – Chinmay Hegde, Antonio D’Souza, Chinmay Gawandalkar, Rahul Kaskar and Prathamesh Kushnaji - guided by their professors Saish Rivankar and Ashley Fernandes, designed and fabricated a pothole-filling machine that works fast, is inexpensive and doesn't require much labour. The project, which cost them close to Rs one lakh, was completed in just seven months.

“Heavy machinery makes pothole-filling cheaper, but only in cases where numerous potholes are present. Also, labour safety is not guaranteed. Here, we've developed a prototype machine to fill potholes with minimum human effort,” D'Souza said.

The vehicle consists of a hopper, a heating system, a roller and a ramming system.

Explaining the entire process, D'Souza said, “Computation decides the amount of mixture to fill the pothole with. The conveyor system will then pour the mix into the pothole and the roller will smoothen out the patch.”

The machine has been tested on potholes that were cleaned with exhaust gas. Hot bitumen was subsequently poured in and filling of the appropriate material followed with the help of the hopper. This material was finally compressed using the machine's roller.

Rivankar, who guided the young men, said that the students took up the challenge to develop a semi-automatic, pothole-filling machine to help solve Goa's ubiquitous pothole problem.

“The formation of potholes is inevitable in Goa due to the heavy rainfall received each year. Our project was aimed at repairing potholes effectively and efficiently. A prototype was accordingly developed that could perform most functions employed in manual pothole-filling operations,” he said.