Agricultural Robots:will change the face of land

               

1.      INTRODUCTION:

Engineers and researchers working to increase the level of autonomous machinery in agriculture and the best solution is to design and build robots capable to work continuously without human guidance. Robots deployed for agricultural purposes can deliver high accuracy and low costs while the farmers can have in real-time a situation of tasks already completed. Agricultural robots or agbot is a robot deployed for agricultural purposes. The main area of application of robots in agriculture today is at the harvesting stage. A possible emerging application of robots or drones is for weed control. Fruit picking robots, driverless tractor / sprayer, and sheep shearing robots are designed to replace human labor. In most cases, a lot of factors have to be considered (e.g., the size and color of the fruit to be picked) before the commencement of a task. Robots can be used for other horticultural tasks such as pruning, weeding, spraying and monitoring. Robots can also be used in livestock applications (livestock robotics) such as automatic milking, washing and castrating. Robots like these have many benefits for the agricultural industry, including a higher quality of fresh produce, lower production costs, and a smaller need for manual labor. They can also be used to automate manual tasks, such as weed or bracken spraying, where the use of tractors and other manned vehicles is too dangerous for the operators.

FIGURE: Agricultural robot

2.       MECHANICAL DESIGN:

The mechanical design consists of an end effector, manipulator, and gripper. Several factors must be considered in the design of the manipulator, including the task, economic efficiency, and required motions. The end effector influences the market value of the fruit and the gripper's design is based on the crop that is being harvested. Future robotic design discussed below

2.1 Autonomous Robot Tractor

From Belgium comes one of the most advanced self-steering tractor designed by a common research team from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) and Flanders’ Mechatronics Technology Centre (FMTC). The aim of these engineers is to build a robotic tractor able for a wide range of maneuvers and working the ground with high accuracy. They pass the problems with uneven and inconsistent terrain that can change the direction of the tractor. The autonomous system component includes a system to act the acceleration and steer, processing unit, and sensors to locate the position including GPS system.

Autonomous Robot Tractor

Sensors and a powerful computer is not enough to keep the tractor on the right path. The development team creates an application where the user calibrates the robot according to each terrain type.

2.2 Hortibot

                                         Hortibot

Autonomous robot for removing manually, spraying or cutting the weeds.
Hortibot was born in the labs of Aarhus University in Denmark and was built by combining the Spider remote controlled robot with research platform AgRobot designed by the Danish agricultural engineers. The result is an autonomous vehicle for farming, a robot used to remove weeds manually, spraying or cutting with flames or laser.

2.3 Lettuce Bot

Lettuce Bot

With 98 percent accuracy the robot exterminate the weeds without affecting the lettuce.
Targeting as a terminator for weeds, Lettuce Bot is an advanced agricultural robot used to exterminate the weeds without affecting the lettuce. With 98 percent accuracy in selecting the weeds, Lettuce Bot has a complex vision algorithm that works in three steps to detect and then slice and inject a minimal quantity of herbicide in the soil that not affect the lettuce.

2.4 Vitirover

Vitirover

Solar autonomous robot for cutting grass between grape vines.
Green, friendly with the nature, Vitirover is an autonomous robot designed to cut the grass and weeds between grape vines. Build by a French company the little robot uses a solar panel to produce energy to power the electric motor and electronic parts. Using a battery to store energy is not the best solution since the robot has to navigate on large areas.

2.5 Wall-Ye

Wall-Ye

Pruning vines robot with soil condition sensor and complex vision system.
Another French company and another vineyard robot capable to pruning 600 vines in one day. Based on four wheels, Wall-Ye navigate on wine rows using six cameras and GPS system to know at every second the position in space.

John Deere Spraying Robot Tractor

John Deere Spraying Robot Tractor

Autonomous tractor for several agricultural operations designed to work continuously day and night.
Take a series tractor, good one like John Deere brand and transforming into a robot is perhaps the simplest project to build an autonomous robot for several agricultural operations. With capacity for day and night working, the robot tractor uses the complex vision system, GPS system, a ground speed radar and one unit for inertial measurement that keeps the robot on the right paths in the field or an orchard.

Two color cameras are the eyes of the robot programmed to detect any obstacle.

3.      APPLICATION

Robots have many fields of application in agriculture. Some examples and prototypes of robots include the Merlin Robot Milker, Rosphere, Harvest Automation, Orange Harvester, lettuce bot, and weeder. One case of a large scale use of robots in farming is the milk bot. It is widespread among British dairy farms because of its efficiency and nonrequirement to move. According to David Gardner (chief executive of the Royal Agricultural Society of England), a robot can complete a complicated task if its repetitive and the robot is allowed to sit in a single place. Furthermore, robots that work on repetitive tasks (e.g. milking) fulfill their role to a consistent and particular standard.