Development of a Field Robot Platform for Mechanical Weed Control in Greenhouse Cultivation of Cucumber (original) (raw)

The use of agricultural robots in weed management and control

Burleigh Dodds Series in Agricultural Science, 2019

Weed management and control are essential for the production of high-yielding and high-quality crops, and advances in weed control technology have had a huge impact on agricultural productivity. Any effective weed control technology needs to be both robust and adaptable. Robust weed control technology will successfully control weeds in spite of variability in the field conditions. Adaptable weed control technology has the capacity to change its strategy in the context of evolving weed populations, genetics, and climatic conditions. This chapter focuses on key work in the development of robotic weeders, including weed perception systems and weed control mechanisms. Following an extensive introduction, the chapter addresses the challenges of robotic weed control focusing on both perception systems, which can detect and classify weed plants from crop plants, and also weed control mechanisms, covering both chemical and mechanical weed control. A case study of an automated weeding system is provided. Disciplines Agricultural Economics | Agriculture | Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering | Robotics Comments This chapter is published as Steward, Brian, Jingyao Gai, and Lie Tang. "The use of agricultural robots in weed management and control. " In Robotics and automation for improving agriculture, edited by

The Use of Weed Control Robot (WCR) for Achieve to the Sustainable Agriculture

Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, 2013

Today, weeds control is very difficult because they are resistant to the herbicide due to excessive use of chemical herbicides in agriculture. Many studies have shown that mechanical and biological control of weeds can be much less damage to the environment of chemical herbicides. Develop of biological herbicides in agriculture was slow due to high prices and this subject the researchers to move toward the elimination of agricultural weed mechanically. This work was originally done by a many number of workers because and workers' rights didn't work was ultimately economic value. Now solve this subject by the use of robotic technology in agriculture has been studied and a many number of agricultural researchers with the help of computer scientists move towards making robots to remove the weeds. Of course this is difficult due to excessive weeds similar to the plants, but the final results will help to increase crop and save the environment by eliminating chemical herbicides.

Automatic Weed Killing Robot for Agriculture Purpose and Insect Killing

International Journal of Research in Advent Technology

Comprehensive review of autonomous robotic weed control systems, reported that systems for plant detection and their classification (crop vs. weed) conferred the best technical challenge for development of a victorious weeding mechanism. Methods for precision weed control also needed further development. Although the few fully autonomous robotic weeding systems that had been developed at the time showed promise for reducing hand labor and/or pesticide requirements, none had been successfully commercialized. Since then, technology has advanced and a number of other machine-driven weeding machines area unit commercially offered. This paper describes some of these devices and provides an update on the current state of robotic weeding. Commercial robotic weeding machines utilize one of several means to kill weeds including mechanical, flame or herbicidal spray. Classifying plants as either crop or weeds is difficult with system accuracy of around only 70%, even under ideal conditions. There are many ways to identify crop plants in digital images, but typically this is done by first analyzing a captured imaged and classifying each pixel in the image as being either a plant or a non-plant part using some type of green threshold technique. Herbicides are used worldwide to manage agricultural weeds. Over 95% of herbicides reach a destination other than their target crops, because they are sprayed or spread everywhere in the agricultural fields. This causes many unwanted effects on environment, humans and other living organisms. The automatic weed control systems provide efficient method of weed removing within the rows and inter rows. The machine vision system has been used to detect and differentiate the weeds from the crop. Guidance system has been used to track the rows with accuracy and to control a row cultivator and an autonomous agricultural robot in real-time. Mechanical methods of automatically removing weeds from the sideline two basic designs are used: a mechanical knife removes weeds from the inter rows and rotating hoe are used to remove the weeds from the within rows. The proposed system is helpful to avoid the usage of herbicides in the agriculture field and also replaces the shortage of labor.

Robot Design and Testing for Greenhouse Applications

Biosystems Engineering, 2006

The latest results of technology and research are increasingly used in agriculture, especially in intensive cultures that ensure remunerative returns. Most cultures in greenhouses are in this category where, despite the large use of technology, human operators still manually perform most operations on the crop although they are often highly repetitive and sometime even dangerous. This fact greatly impacts on the quality of the product, on the production costs and on collateral issues, such as pollution and safety. In this paper, the state of research in robotic automation in agriculture outlining the characteristics that robots should have to allow their profitable use is considered. A multi-purpose low-cost robot prototype, designed and built according to such characteristics, is then presented together with the results of some preliminary experimentation with it. Although more research is needed, the results prove to be promising and show some advantages that can be achieved with robotic automation. In particular, precision spraying and precision fertilisation applications have been developed and tested. Although the productivity of the prototype is quite low (in the range of 400-500 plant/h), experiments conducted continuously for several hours show that the robot can perform tasks unaffordable by human operators.

IJERT-Development and Usability Test of Pesticide Spraying Robot for Greenhouse

International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology (IJERT), 2021

https://www.ijert.org/development-and-usability-test-of-pesticide-spraying-robot-for-greenhouse https://www.ijert.org/research/development-and-usability-test-of-pesticide-spraying-robot-for-greenhouse-IJERTV10IS050076.pdf The purpose of this study is to introduce the development of a pesticide spraying robot to prevent the health hazards such as pesticide poisoning and heatstroke that occur during spraying pesticides in a greenhouse and to compensate the farmers' shortage due to the aging and decrease of farmers. This robot is autonomous and can be operated unmanned. It moves between ridges in the greenhouse by line traces and sprays pesticides based on the results of image recognition and measurement of the distance to crops by ultrasonic sensors. Using n CCD camera for line tracking was adopted as the driving method. The width of the robot was kept within 50 cm, so it was possible to significantly reduce costs and maintain the yield of crops without having to rebuild the fields. In addition, identifying the crops to apply pesticides by image recognition and accurately applying pesticides only to the crops, the usage of pesticides was reduced by about 42%. This has the advantage of reducing the cost of pesticides and reducing the impact of pesticides on crops. As a future improvement of the robot, we will try to reduce the cost by replacing myRIO used in the microcomputer with an inexpensive microcomputer such as Arduino. Robots have already been put in Practical use for cucumbers, white radishes, and peanuts, tomatoes, etc., but we will continue to put them into practical use for other types.

An autonomous robot for harvesting cucumbers in greenhouses

2002

This paper describes the concept of an autonomous robot for harvesting cucumbers in greenhouses. A description is given of the working environment of the robot and the logistics of harvesting. It is stated that for a 2 ha Dutch nursery, 4 harvesting robots and one docking station are needed during the peak season. Based on these preliminaries, the design specifications of the harvest robot are defined. The main requirement is that a single harvest operation may take at most 10 s. Then, the paper focuses on the individual hardware and software components of the robot. These include, the autonomous vehicle, the manipulator, the end-effector, the two computer vision systems for detection and 3D imaging of the fruit and the environment and, finally, a control scheme that generates collisionfree motions for the manipulator during harvesting. The manipulator has seven degrees-of-freedom (DOF). This is sufficient for the harvesting task. The end-effector is designed such that it handles the soft fruit without loss of quality. The thermal cutting device included in the end-effector prevents the spreading of viruses through the greenhouse. The computer vision system is able to detect more than 95% of the cucumbers in a greenhouse. Using geometric models the ripeness of the cucumbers is determined. A motion planner based on the A * -search algorithm assures collision-free eye-hand co-ordination. In autumn 2001 system integration took place and the harvesting robot was tested in a greenhouse. With a success rate of 80%, field tests confirmed the ability of the robot to pick cucumbers without human interference. On average the robot needed 45 s to pick one cucumber. Future research focuses on hardware and software solutions to improve the picking speed and accuracy of the eye-hand co-ordination of the robot.

Robotics-automation and sensor-based approaches in weed detection and control: A review

International Journal of Chemical Studies, 2020

Undesirable and unwanted plants grow autonomously, nonuniformly in farmland and compete with the beneficial crop called a weed. It strives with the crop for nutrients, sunlight, water, space and grows at a faster rate. This results in a decreased growth rate of crop seedlings, make them susceptible to pests and diseases, eventually responsible for crop yield reduction and pertains to the poor economic condition of farmers as well as the nation. Hence, weed control is very crucial in crop production. Several studies have documented the yield loss associated with weed competition. Limiting factors of general weed control methods create the situation for design-development of new approaches based on robotics, automation and sensor techniques. Many research studies documented various weed discrimination, identification and control mechanisms in the fields. The automatic distinction between crop-weed has its own importance in weed control applications. Sensor-based approaches, machine vision systems, RTK GPS based systems, etc. are found better to achieve effective weed control and helps in improving crop yield. Robotic technology could provide a means to reduce current dependency of agriculture on chemical herbicides, strengthening its sustainability, and minimizing environmental impacts. These new technologies hold promise towards the improvement of agriculture's few remaining unmechanized and drudging tasks. This paper reviews the robotics-automation and sensor-based approaches in the detection of weeds and their control strategies.

AgriBot: An Autonomous Weeder Robot

International Journal of Advances Engineering and Civil Research

For thousands of decades, agriculture has been one of the most important sectors in the development of Egyptian civilization. And with the recent advancement of technology and the need for increasing sustainability autonomous robots will play a huge role in the future of agriculture-especially in weeding applications. Weeding is necessary because weeds compete with the main crop plant for different factors such as water, sunlight, nutrients, and space, hence affecting plant growth. Traditional weeding methods usually use chemicals in an excessive way that causes lots of damage to the crops and has a negative impact on both, the environment, and human health. In addition, it requires a lot of manpower and unnecessary costs. Modern technology must be applied to solve such issues while keeping farmers competitive. A design of a robot is proposed to reduce herbicides input in the field to its minimum while in parallel trying to provide cost, time, and fuel economies. Our project-in the form of an autonomous robot that aims to get rid of weeds with the use of a micro-dose of herbicides-robot represents a major innovation in weeding methods. It is 100% autonomous. It can detect the weed with high precision in order to spray the herbicide on them directly without affecting the crops. Furthermore, it uses less herbicide to reduce the costs and the environmental impact. Plus, the robot will be powered by a renewable source of energy-solar energy-to help reduce carbon emissions and improve sustainability.

Design and full realization of physical weed control (PWC) automated machine within the RHEA project

2014

Currently precision agriculture can rely on modern technologies that allow to design and realize operative machines provided with perception systems, in order to perform precise and targeted treatments. The ultimate objective of this synergy consists in reducing the use of agrochemicals and energy, enhancing the sustainability of agricultural practices. In this regard, the RHEA project funded by EU, aims to develop a fleet of etherogenous autonomous robot units in order to perform precise treatments related to crop protection in different scenarios. In this paper is reported the design and the development of an automatic machines able to perform, at the same time, mechanical and thermal weed control on maize is described and discussed. The equipment will be coupled to an autonomous ground mobile unit equipped with a row and a weed detection systems. The operative machines was designed to remove weeds mechanically from the inter-row spaces of the crop and perform selective and target...