Low Cost Semi-Autonomous Agricultural Robots In Pakistan-Vision Based Navigation Scalable methodology for wheat harvesting

Abstract

Robots have revolutionized our way of life in recent years.One of the domains that has not yet completely benefited from the robotic automation is the agricultural sector. Agricultural Robotics should complement humans in the arduous tasks during different sub-domains of this sector. Extensive research in Agricultural Robotics has been carried out in Japan, USA, Australia and Germany focusing mainly on the heavy agricultural machinery. Pakistan is an agricultural rich country and its economy and food security are closely tied with agriculture in general and wheat in particular. However, agricultural research in Pakistan is still carried out using the conventional methodologies. This paper is an attempt to trigger the research in this modern domain so that we can benefit from cost effective and resource efficient autonomous agricultural methodologies. This paper focuses on a scalable low cost semi-autonomous technique for wheat harvest which primarily focuses on the farmers with small land holdings. The main focus will be on the vision part of the navigation system deployed by the proposed robot.