Autonomous Soil Collection in Environments With Heterogeneous Terrain

TL;DR

This paper presents a robotic system capable of autonomously collecting soil from heterogeneous terrains using a general-purpose robotic arm, enabling soil sampling and analysis without human intervention.

Contribution

It introduces a novel autonomous soil collection prototype that employs a versatile robotic arm instead of traditional soil core samplers for heterogeneous environments.

Findings

Successful autonomous soil collection demonstrated

Versatile robotic arm effectively distinguishes soil types

Potential for improved soil analysis workflows

Abstract

To autonomously collect soil in uncultivated terrain, robotic arms must distinguish between different amorphous materials and submerge themselves into the correct material. We develop a prototype that collects soil in heterogeneous terrain. If mounted to a mobile robot, it can be used to perform soil collection and analysis without human intervention. Unique among soil sampling robots, we use a general-purpose robotic arm rather than a soil core sampler.