Automated Robotic Moisture Monitoring in Agricultural Fields

TL;DR

This paper presents an automated robotic system that monitors soil moisture in large agricultural fields using sensors, path planning algorithms, and image processing to improve efficiency and reduce manual effort.

Contribution

It introduces a novel integrated system combining robotic navigation, moisture sensing, and image analysis for automated field moisture monitoring.

Findings

Prototype successfully detects dry soil areas.

Path planning using Dijkstra's algorithm optimizes robot navigation.

System provides efficient moisture content assessment.

Abstract

Monitoring moisture level of land in a large-scale plantation is tedious. The main objective of this project is to use a robotic kit in collaboration with the on-field moisture sensor circuits, thereby creating an efficient and economical moisture monitoring system. A large agriculture field is divided into smaller grids. Each grid is placed with a moisture sensor. Whenever a sensor reports the soil to be dry, the robot goes to the concerned field for inspection. The path to the concerned field is found by applying Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm on the aerial image of the field. Then the total moisture content of the field is calculated by the robot using suitable image processing algorithms and reported accordingly. For developing and testing this work, a small study field was set up above which a camera was mounted at an appropriate height to capture its aerial view. Thus a prototype for an automated system of monitoring agricultural fields' moisture has been developed through this work.