KFUPM Heroes

Five mechanical engineers who graduated from KFUPM in Saudi Arabia. the project win the EXPO in our university also it was ranked as one of the six best projects in AUDI innovation award in 2019.  

Designing a portable machine for dates harvesting as final objective. The intermediate developed machine should be light in weight for ease of installation and relocation between palm trees. The machine will be able to climb palm trees and to descend back to the ground irrespective of the diameter of the tree and using remote control by the operator.

The most popular way is that someone ( Farmer ) is climbing the tree with a basket . He first tight himself with a rope in the tree and then he climb up to top. Collecting the dates. And when its get heavy.  He decline to the ground and again doing the job till  collect all the dates. 

Although the tradition way may work, but it has its own problems, It takes time and effort to collect dates from all trees. And also, Safety is a big issue here. Anybody is climbing. He is under the risk of falling Or maybe his feet slip off as well as the heavy weight might cause health issue in the back.

So instead of put yourself at risk. Our team come up with the idea of a machine that can climb the tree and collect the dates for you.

A portable date harvesting machine is a mechanical system which is connected to an electrical source.  Mainly, a  technician has to set up the machine down in the palm tree. Then you see these 4 springs. They are going to be in compression and have the ability to expand a bit when climbing with the change of the diameter. Also in the side, you can see that there are two slots allowing us to set it up with different tree diameters.

This will allow the gears to run at high speeds. Then the two rollers  are rotating together to climb the tree. Once it reaches the top. We have created a lock mechanism. This will grab and tight the machine with the tree. Also, we have long arms in the sided. These can be control by technicians to collect dates.

Why do we choose the rollers instead of any other shape? This is because the rollers. Have more contact area with the surface. Therefore, more efficient. Talk about the basket. The machine has two main bodies. The one shown here and a similar shape and its function is a basket. It will be dragged while climbing up the tree.

As mentioned, our robot keep his eyes on the farmers who dead every year because of the dangerous of that work.

One of the engineering course in the mechanical engineering school required designing a project who solve a real problem. after the brain storming we came up with our project idea.

their is no human who would like to see the people dying, and the project is a soulin that can manmize it

The project is structured based in huge and accurate analysis which is made by five mechanical engineers. 

In addition of being mechanical engineers, we are living in a city that is considered as a source of dates and it is called "the one million palm tree city".

the studying journey was filled up with many projects and every project needs a leader who can manages the team. I usually be that guy who lead the team.

KFUPM is one of the strongest engineering universes in the middle east and this project was ranked as the winner of the EXPO that occurred in the university.