Autonomous Agriculture Robot for Smart Farming

TL;DR

This paper presents a solar-powered, semi-autonomous agricultural robot equipped with perception, robotic arm, and fluid delivery systems to improve farm operations for low-height vegetable crops.

Contribution

It introduces a novel intelligent ground robot capable of detection, classification, weed removal, and targeted fluid delivery in farming environments.

Findings

Successful detection and classification of plants in real-world tests.

Effective autonomous weed cutting and fluid delivery demonstrated.

Promising results for future crop and soil health monitoring applications.

Abstract

This project aims to develop and demonstrate a ground robot with intelligence capable of conducting semi-autonomous farm operations for different low-heights vegetable crops referred as Agriculture Application Robot(AAR). AAR is a lightweight, solar-electric powered robot that uses intelligent perception for conducting detection and classification of plants and their characteristics. The system also has a robotic arm for the autonomous weed cutting process. The robot can deliver fertilizer spraying, insecticide, herbicide, and other fluids to the targets such as crops, weeds, and other pests. Besides, it provides information for future research into higher-level tasks such as yield estimation, crop, and soil health monitoring. We present the design of robot and the associated experiments which show the promising results in real world environments.