A TECHNICAL SEMINAR REPORT

On

AGRICULTURE ROBOTS

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements

for the award of the degree of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY

In

ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

By

YADDALA GAYATHRI

(16KA1A0443)

DEPARMENT OF ELECTRONICS &COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

JNTUA COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING KALIKIRI

KALIKIRI-517234, CHITTOOR (District)

ANDHRA PRADESH-INDIA

2016-2020
 JAWAHARLAL NEHRU TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY ANANTAPUR

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING KALIKIRI

KALIKIRI, CHITTOOR (DISTRICT)

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

STUDENT DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that to the best of my
Knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or material which has been
accepted for the award of any degree or diploma of any University or Institute of higher learning.

Y.GAYATHRI

(16KA1A0443)
LIST OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES
 ABSTRACT

Agribot is a robot used for agricultural purposes. The advent of robots in

agriculture is drastically increased the productivity and efficiency. ​Robotics is playing a
significant role in agricultural production and management. There is a need for autonomous and
time saving technology in agriculture to have efficient farm management. The researchers are
now focusing towards different farming operational parameters to design autonomous
agricultural vehicles as the conventional farm machineries are crop and topological dependent.
Till date the agricultural robots have been researched and developed principally for harvesting,
chemical spraying, picking fruits and monitoring of crops.

Robots like these are perfect substitute for manpower to a great extent as they
deploy unmanned sensing and machinery systems. The prime benefits of development of
autonomous and intelligent agricultural robots are to improve repeatable precision, efficacy,
reliability and minimization of soil compaction and drudgery. The robots have potential for
multitasking. ​Initially the robot tills the entire field and proceeds to ploughing, simultaneously
dispensing seeds side by side. The device used for navigation is an ultrasonic sensor which
continuously sends data to the microcontroller. On the field the robot operates on automated
mode, but outside the field is strictly operated in manual mode. For manual control the robot uses
the Bluetooth pairing app as control device and helps in the navigation of the robot outside the
field. The field is fitted with humidity sensors placed at various spots that continuously monitor
the environment for humidity levels. It checks these levels with the set point for humidity and
alerts the farmer.
 The alerting mechanism is GSM module that sends a text message to the farmer
informing him about the breach in set point. The farmer then responds via SMS to either switch
on the water sprinklers or ignore the alert. The water sprinklers, if on, bring down the humidity
level thus providing an ideal growing environment to crop. Farmers today spend a lot of money
on machines that help them decrease labour and increase yield of crops but the profit and
efficiency are very less. Hence automation is the ideal solution to overcome all the shortcomings
by creating machines that perform one operations and automating it to increase yield on a large
scale.

CHAPTER-1

INTRODUCTION:

Agriculture is the backbone of India. The robotics plays a major role in various
fields such as industrial, medical, military applications etc., The robotics field are gradually
increasing its productivity in agriculture field. Some of the major problems in the Indian
agricultural are rising of input costs, availability of skilled labours, lack of water resources and
crop monitoring. To overcome these problems, the automation technologies were used in
agriculture. The automation in the agriculture could help farmers to reduce their efforts. The
robots are being developed for the processes such as fruit picking, monitoring, irrigation, etc.,
All of these functions have not yet performed using a single robot.

In this the robots are developed to concentrate in an efficient manner and also
it is expected to perform the operations autonomously. The proposed idea implements the robot
to perform the functions such as planting, irrigation, fertilization, monitoring, and harvesting.
These functions can be integrated into a single robot and then performed. The robot is expected
to perform the functions such as planting, irrigation, fertilization, monitoring, and harvesting.
Fig: Planting

​We are applying the idea of robotics technology in agriculture. In agriculture,

the opportunities for robot-enhanced productivity are immense and the robots are appearing on
farms in various guises and in increasing numbers. We can expect the robots performing
agriculture operations autonomously such as spraying and mechanical weed control, fruit
picking, watching the farms day and night for an effective report. Agribot is a robot designed for
agricultural purposes. It is designed to minimize the labour of farmers in addition to increasing
the speed and accuracy of the work. It performs the elementary functions involved in farming i.e.
harvesting, spraying, seeding and removing the weeds.
Fig: Analyzing the crop

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES:

● To provide access to hazard environment.

● Reduced operating costs due to lower cost of employing robots.

● Higher overall availability of robot workers (no lunch breaks or vacations) and many
more.
● To complete large amount of work in less time. 
CHAPTER-2

CONSTRUCTION OF ROBOTICS:

The main feature of the Robot is the Ability to find the grass in the field using
Image processing. For this we are using a special purpose Web cam which will take photos
inside the field and if the grass is found then it will inform the robot to cut the grass in the crop
field and also it will pick the grass which has been cut by the robot.
 ​Fig: Block Diagram

We will keep the maximum and minimum limit of plant growth. As soon as it crosses the
maximum height of the plant then we will use cutting mechanism to cut the plant. The above
figure shows block diagram of the whole robot that we are going to implement.

BLOCK DIAGRAM EXPLANATION:

ARM 7:

This generation introduced the Thumb 16-bit instruction set providing improved code
density compared to previous designs. The most widely used ARM7 designs implement the
ARMv4T architecture, but some implement ARMv3 or ARMv5TEJ. All these designs use a Von
Neumann architecture, thus the few versions comprising a cache do not separate data and
instruction caches.

LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY:

LCD is used in a project to visualize the output of the application. We have

used 16×2 LCD which indicates 16 columns and 2 rows. So, we can write 16 characters in each
line. So, total 32 characters we can display on 16×2 LCD.

CAMERA​:

The Rs232 standard is used to interface the computer with the microcontroller. The
computer is connected by the web camera for recognition. The Matlab software window is used.
Below figure depicts the image of web camera.

Fig. LCD Used

PC:
​We already know about the facility of the mobile, so after receiving data from
the webcam we can copy or use the same data in our PC. The PC and RF receiver can be
interfaced with the help of the data cable DKU-50. We are using the MATLAB software in our
PC for the user interface with the system. With the help of this MATLAB software any user can
easily make the use of the system.

RS 232:

RS 232 is a serial communication cable used in the system. Here, the RS 232
provides the serial communication between the microcontroller and the outside world such as
display, PC or Mobile etc. So it is a media used to communicate between microcontroller and the
PC.

DC MOTOR:

DC motors are used to physically drive the application as per the requirement
provided in software. The dc motor works on 12v. To drive a dc motor, we need a dc motor
driver called L293D. This dc motor driver is capable of driving 2 dc motors at a time. In order to
protect the dc motor from a back EMF generated by the dc motor while changing the direction of
rotation, the dc motor driver have an internal protection suit. We can also provide the back EMF
protection suit by connecting 4 diode configurations across each dc motor.

DC MOTOR DRIVER (L293D):

The Device is a monolithic integrated high voltage, high current four channel
driver designed to accept standard DTL or TTL logic levels and drive inductive loads (such as
relays solenoids , DC and stepping motors) and switching power transistors. To simplify use as
two bridges each pair of channels is equipped with an enable input.

WORKING:
 Here we are proposing an agricultural autonomous Robot. The Robot will have
a cutting and picking mechanism as well as it will spray pesticides on the crops. So, in all this is
a completely autonomous robot.

Fig: Automated Planting machine in action

It has a camera which will give a live vision of the field so while it performs its
basic operations we can monitor everything. For large farms a GPS based module can be
installed depending on which we can fix a specific land to be harvested in which pattern or way.
After harvesting or cutting, it will pick up the crops and place it in a vessel which is beside the
robot. A further spraying mechanism is also present in the robot which will spray the pesticides
on the crops.
CHAPTER-3

TYPES OF ROBOTS USED IN AGRICULTURE:

Demeter (used for harvesting).

Robot for weed control.
Forester robot.
Robot in horticulture.
Fruit picking robot.
Micro-flying robot.
The robots mentioned here come under are ​Field robots​ and some are ​Mobile robots.

Field robots work with respect to environment and medium. They change themselves according
to the required condition.

Mobile robots are those which posses mobility with respect a medium. The entire system moves
with respect to environment.

OPERATION OF AGRICULTURAL ROBOTS:

DEMETER: Robot farmer

"Labour requirements to grow and harvest the crops must be reduced through
automation". The main area of application of robots in agriculture is at the harvesting stage.
Demeter is a robot that can cut crops like wheat and alfalfa. It is named for the Roman goddess
of agriculture. Although, it may look like a normal harvester, Demeter can drive by itself without
any human supervision. Unfortunately, people get tired and bored, and their productivity goes
down. With a robotic harvester, however, it never gets tired and can operate 24 hours a day.

Demeter has cameras on it that can detect the difference between the crop that
has been cut and crop that hasn’t. This information tells it where to drive, where to put its cutter
head, and when it has come to the end of a crop row so it can turn around. Demeter has a cruise
control function. An operator can ride along with it. Demeter can drive, steer, and control the
cutter head while the operator can focus on other tasks. The Demeter robot can also be driven by
remote control. Or, Demeter can be taught a path, and then follow that path using its on board
sensors and computer control systems. It can follow the path with an accuracy of up to 3
centimeters.

Fig: Demeter harvesting the Crop in Holland

The Demeter system strives to provide three levels of automation to harvesters,

and eventually to tractors and combines. First, a “cruise control” feature, which will
automatically steer, drive and control the harvesting header, will be provided to harvester
operators. This feature will allow the operator to focus on other in-cab controls and harvest
conditions, and to better handle contingency situations. Secondly “a drone” feature will be
provided, allowing one operator to remotely control several harvesters.

Thirdly, a fully autonomous machine will be developed that will allow a harvester to completely
harvest a field with no human supervision.

Benefits: The first two levels of the Demeter system allow fewer, lesser-skilled operators to
provide performance equal to or better than the current harvester performance on the average
farm. At the final level of automation, performance will be maintained with no human
supervision.

Weed Controller:

Farm working usually involves a harsh environment such as limited work space
and soft, unstable or uneven surfaces. The development of novel weeding technologies that can
reduce manual effort by 50% to 100% in organically grown sugar beets and vegetable and
herbicide usage by 75-100% in high value crops. They can also be used in plants, which are
widely separated. This techniques use robots in the field, to replace operators on steerage hoes.

Fig:Removing Weeds using a vision guided intra-row cultivator

A four-wheel-drive weed-seeking robot was developed by the Danish Farm

Research Authority. The task of the weed-removing device is to remove or destroy the weed.
Crops that are grown in rows can be weeded by running a hoe between the crop rows. Labour
consuming systems that involve an operator driving the tractor, with a second person controlling
the hoe. An intelligent hoe uses vision systems to identify the rows of crops, and steer itself
accurately between them, considerably reducing the need for herbicides Weed identification is
based on colour photography. The equipped robot helps production of weed maps identifying
plant.

Vision-guided intra-row cultivator, able to perform mechanical weed control

within the row of sugar beets plants, thus totally eliminating the need for chemical weed control.
An Autonomous mobile robot for agriculture operations is driven by its two wheels at the back,
each independently driven with a DC-servo motor equipped with encoder, tachometer and
brakes. The steering mechanism is an Ackerman-steering controlled with a DC-servo-motor.The
electrical power is provided by batteries or by a fuel-driven generator the systems looks at a
certain environment containing several plants. Knowing that the sugar beet plants are sown in
rows and with a certain constant distance among them, it is possible to classify the sugar plant
from the weed plant. It could be saving farmers money right from the starting. For safe night
work, field obstacles can be programmed into each field map so the tractor can automatically
take avoidance action.

ROBOTS USED IN FOREST:

Treebot:

A fearless mobile robot is helping scientists monitor environmental changes in

forests .The hi-tech Tarzan of the robot world, nicknamed Treebot is the first of its kind to
combine networked sensors, a web cam, and a wireless net link. It is solar-powered and moves
up and down special cables to take samples and measurements for vital analysis.

Treebot has been developed by scientists at the US Center for Embedded

Network Sensing in California. Pinpoint precision Programmed with open-source
computercode,Linux, the Treebot is a vital addition to researchers' environmental monitoring kit,
according to one of the project leaders, Professor William Kaiser. "One of the objectives is to
make use of distributed sensors to acquire information about the environment," he said.
"It is very important in the biology community to understand the interaction between the
atmosphere and the forest environment." Understanding subtle changes in light, humidity, and
carbon dioxide levels give scientists crucial indications and predictions about environmental
change. But 90% of all interaction between the environment and atmospheric conditions happens
high up in the forest canopy, and it is a challenge taking detailed measurements and monitoring
conditions over a period of time. The Treebot , which in scientific terms is a node in a
Networked Info mechanical System (Nims), helps by being stealthy enough to travel through the
forest canopy along specially constructed cabling, night and day.

Forester robot:

This is a special type of robot used for cutting up of wood, tending trees, and
pruning of X- mas tree and for harvesting pulp and hard wood and in the forests. It employs a
special jaws and axes for chopping the branch. The forester robot with six legged moves in the
forest.

Fig: Forester Robot

The picture shows the robot moving wood out of the forest. The leg coordination is automated
but still the navigation is done by the human operator on the robot.

Robot In Horticulture​:
 Robot is used in lawns to cut the grass the grass in lawns. This type of robot
was already released in the market. What all is to be done is to lay a wire along the garden and
connect it to the perimeter switch. The Robot mower's patented technology allows it to negotiate
and move around obstacles. And because it moves in a triangular pattern from many different
directions, it'll cut any lawn, regardless of its geometric shape. In automatic mode, a fully
charged Robo-mower can typically mow a lawn of 2500 to 3200 sq. ft., depending on the
number of obstacles in its path, slopes, height of grass, humidity, etc. It operates electrically on
rechargeable batteries, mulching blades and whisper quiet operation. No fumes or oil leaks. No
pollution. Whisper quiet operation.

About as quiet as a hair blower.

Runs on rechargeable power pack--​no need for oil and gas.

Press one button and mover starts working, you are not needed on the lawn while
it operates

An excellent mulcher, so you won't need to collect and bag any grass clippings.
Loaded with built-in safety features to protect children and pets.
No need to worry about theft with the new theft deterrent system.

Fruit picking robot:

The principles of fruit picking robots have been developed since the early
1980's. These principles have opened up new approaches to the harvesting of crops. However, to
fully develop the fruit picking robotics technology, contributions from high-tech industry,
agricultural commodity groups and farm equipment manufacturers must be sought.
Fig: Block diagram of Fruit picker

To start with, the fruit picking robots need to pick ripe fruit without damaging
the branches or leaves of the tree. Mobility is a priority, and the robots must be able to access all
areas of the tree being harvested. It goes then without saying that the robots must be intelligent,
and have a human-like interaction with their surroundings through senses of touch, sight, and
image processing. The fundamental blocks of these robots are shown in the (fig.5).

The robot can distinguish between fruit and leaves by using video image
capturing. The camera is mounted on the robot arm, and the colours detected are compared with
properties stored in memory. If a match is obtained, the fruit is picked. If fruit is hidden by
leaves, an air jet can be used to blow leaves out the way so a clearer view and access can be
obtained.

The robot arm itself is coated in rubber to minimize any damage to the tree. It
has 5degrees of freedom, allowing it to move, in, out, up, down, and in cylindrical and spherical
motion patterns. The pressure applied to the fruit is sufficient for removal from the tree, but not
enough to crush the fruit. This is accomplished by a feedback process from the gripper
mechanism, which is driven by motors, hydraulics, or a pneumatic system. The shape of the
gripper depends on the fruit being picked, as some fruits, such as plums, crush very easily, while
others, like oranges are not so susceptible to bruising.

The robots should have access to all areas of the orchard in order to reach all of
the fruit. Significant work has been done in the production of end effectors in France. They are
capable of harvesting apples and citrus.

Fig:Robot picking from Apple orchard Fig: Robot working at night in citrus garden

The limitations of these systems were mainly in their inability of picking the fruits, which were
covered by the branches. This resulted in robots being in capable of harvesting more than 75%.

Robot for greenhouse operations​:

Robotics in agriculture has experienced a significant development in the last

decade. In particular, research has been devoted to plant inspection, transportation, grafting and
especially, harvesting of fruits and vegetables in horticulture. Research has also been carried out
in the field of mobile robots that carry devices for agricultural operation.
CHAPTER: 4

WHY GREEN HOUSE SHOULD BE AUTOMATED:

Greenhouses are translucent glass or plastic buildings for rearing or hastening

the growth of plants. The distribution of plants inside greenhouses usually consists of an
alternation of double rows of plants and narrow corridors for human operation. This kind of
agricultural technique is massively used for intensive production of horticultural products in
regions with otherwise adverse natural climatic conditions, since it allows an improved use of
water and daylight. The favorable atmosphere created inside greenhouses for plant growth causes
pests and undesirable organisms to thrive as well, making necessary the use of pesticides and
other chemical products that must be sprayed directly on the plants.

4.1 HAZARDS TO HUMANS​:

Recent studies have reported evidence that spraying operations have hazardous effects on the
health of knapsack sprayer human operators, who are specially exposed when working inside
greenhouses, in conditions of high temperature and poor ventilation.Therefore, the automation of
spraying, as well as other greenhouse operations like measurement and control of environmental
conditions, harvest support, plant inspection,The multi grasping system proposed aims at picking
single leaves from a plant; the operation, actually, is performed by men using two hands one to
hold the stem and the other to tear the leaf.

Fig: Automated Treatment

The fixture has two pickers; when they approach the leaf to be detached, the
connecting link of the lower picker keeps the leaf against the upper one, until the carried blade
cuts the sample. The sprinklers or nebulisers are other rigs required for the specialized delivering
of chemicals; a tip clamp is endowed with a nozzle, so that administration is localized (with
proper dose), while holding the piece to be vaporized. The different mechanical components, due
to dust and dirty scattered into the glasshouses surrounding, are protected by tyre hulls, that can
be tided with compressed air at beginning of the duty cycles or whenever required.
CHAPTER-5

FUTURE SCOPE:

Flying micro robot: (a newly proposed robot):

Scientists from around the world are reverse-engineering the mechanics of insects

as they design midget robots to scout battlefields, search for victims trapped in rubble,

and record images in agricultural fields

  
Fig: ​Micro Robot

The world’s smallest micro robot was placed in the geniuses’ book of world
record. The experiments have been conducted so as to know the fields of operation.. The micro
robot consists of propeller by which it can fly to heights these features include the ability to zero
in and land precisely on a potato chip and then flap their wings to buzz off with blazing speed. It
is expected that it can be used in agriculture for the control of weed and insects​. 

CHAPTER-6

ADVANTAGES: 

✔ The Robot does not get sick or tired and does not need time off.

✔ It can operate with closer tolerances (so every round is at full field capacity), Fewer
errors and at higher speeds
 ✔ Because machines can be made lighter and cheaper if the driver’s seat, controls and cab
can be eliminated.

✔ It can be used in various fields like agriculture, medicine, mining, and space research.

✔ It can be sent to another planet to study their environmental conditions.

✔ The machines could easily work around trees, rocks, ponds and other obstacles.

✔ Small suburban fields could be worked almost as efficiently as large tracts of land.

DISADVANTAGES:

✔ One of the key disadvantages of driverless machines for agriculture is liability.

✔ Access to the technology.

✔ Not currently scale neutral.

✔ Better sensors would help. Improved scouting programs would be essential. Nevertheless,
a periodic human presence in the field is likely to be necessary for the near future.

✔ Robots could change the culture /emotional appeal of agriculture.

✔ Energy issues costly.

CHAPTER-7

APPLICATIONS:
 Agricultural robots automate slow, repetitive and dull tasks for farmers,
allowing them to focus more on improving overall production yields. Some of the most common
robots in agriculture are used for:

● Harvesting and picking

● Weed control
● Autonomous mowing, pruning, seeding, spraying and thinning
● Crop Seeding
● Crop weeding and Spraying

Fig: Crop Seeding

Harvesting and picking is one of the most popular robotic applications in

agriculture due to the accuracy and speed that robots can achieve to improve the size of yields
and reduce waste from crops being left in the field.

These applications can be difficult to automate, however. For example, a

robotic system designed to pick sweet peppers encounters many obstacles. Vision systems have
to determine the location and ripeness of the pepper in harsh conditions, including the presence
of dust, varying light intensity, temperature swing and movement created by the wind

But it still takes more than advanced vision systems to pick a pepper. A robotic
arm has to navigate environments with just as many obstacles to delicately grasp and place a
pepper. This process is very different from picking and placing a metal part on an assembly line.
The agricultural robotic arm must be flexible in a dynamic environment and accurate enough not
to damage the peppers as they’re being picked.
CONCLUSION:

This paper has set out a vision of how aspects of crop production could be
automated one. Although existing manned operations can be efficient over large areas there is a
potential for reducing the scale of treatments with autonomous machines that may result in even
higher efficiencies. The development process may be incremental but the overall concept
requires a paradigm shift in the way we think about mechanization for crop production that is
based more on plant needs and novel ways of meeting them rather than modifying existing
techniques.

In agriculture, the opportunities for robot-enhanced productivity are immense

– and the robots are appearing on farms in various guises and in increasing numbers. The other
problems associated with autonomous farm equipment can probably be overcome with
technology. This equipment may be in our future, but there are important reasons for thinking
that it may not be just replacing the human driver with a computer. It may mean a rethinking of
how crop production is done. Crop production may be done better and cheaper with a swarm of
small machines than with a few large ones.

One of the advantages of the smaller machines is that they may be more
acceptable to the non-farm community. The jobs in agriculture are a drag, dangerous, require
intelligence and quick, though highly repetitive decisions hence robots can be rightly substituted
with human operator. The higher quality products can be sensed by machines (colour, firmness,
weight, density, ripeness, size, shape) accurately. Robots can improve the quality of our lives but
there are downsides.
REFERENCES:

1. Patrick Piper and Jacob Vogelpublished a paper on “Designing an Autonomous Soil

Monitoring Robot” (IEEE - 2015).
2. Mahendran, Jayashree, Alagusundaram published a paper on “Application of Computer
Vision Technique on Sorting and Grading of Fruits and Vegetables” (JFTP-2012).
3. Satish Kumar and Sudeep published a paper on “Robots for Precision Agriculture”
(NaCoMM-2007).
Ankit Singh and Abhishek Gupta published a paper on “agribot” (IJARCCE-2015).
4. Fale and Bhure amit published a paper on “Autonomous farming robot with plant health
indication”(IJATES-2015) .
5. Blackmore and Stout published a paper on “Robotic agriculture - the future of
agricultural mechanisation” (IEEE-2005).
6. Akash Bhosale and Sumeet Poddar published a paper on “An autonomous robot for
harvesting cucumbers in green houses” (IEEE- 2011).
7. Bill Stout and Maohua Wangpublished a paper on “Detecting tomato crops in green
houses using a vision based system” (IEEE-2012).
8. Gragliapublished a paper on “Autonomous robots for agricultural tasks and farm
assignment and future trends in agro robots” (IJMME-IJNS2013).
9. Weather head published a paper on “An autonomous tree climbing robot utilizing four
bar linkage system” (CIGR-2002).