1A2-B18 Development of a Small Weeding Robot "AIGAMOROBOT" for Paddy Fields : Development of a Drive Control System for following the Row of Rice Plants

Abstract

We propose an organic cultural method for paddy fields in hilly and mountainous areas. In this method, a small rover (AIGAMO ROBOT) assists weeding work by running and stirring soil in the paddy field. So far, we confirmed the effects of weeding by the robot in experiments. In the experiments we controlled the robot manually by radio control, but autonomous drive control is necessary for reducing farmer's labor load. Therefore we developed a drive control system detecting the row of rice plants by a small NIR camera.