Autonomous Fertilizer Spraying Mobile Robot

Abstract

The agricultural sector plays an important role in our modern society and demands the involvement of technology to improve farming methods and crop yield. Farmers mostly rely on manually operated equipment, and tasks such as spraying fertilizers are performed by the laborers. It may be cost-effective but can cause serious health issues due to prolonged exposure to such chemicals. This paper is a simulation-based approach to the basic design and testing of a mobile robot that can autonomously navigate and spray fertilizers in a controlled outdoor environment. These robots commonly use a LIDAR sensor, and wheel encoders for mapping, localization, and navigation; with packages like Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), GMapping, and Adaptive Monte Carlo Localization (AMCL). The simulation is done using Gazebo and RViz where the environment consists of three distinct crop strips. The tests done were mainly regarding reliability of the path planning process and dynamic obstacle detection.