1 research outputs found
Robotic Tankette for Intelligent BioEnergy Agriculture: Design, Development and Field Tests
In recent years, the use of robots in agriculture has been increasing mainly
due to the high demand of productivity, precision and efficiency, which follow
the climate change effects and world population growth. Unlike conventional
agriculture, sugarcane farms are usually regions with dense vegetation,
gigantic areas, and subjected to extreme weather conditions, such as intense
heat, moisture and rain. TIBA - Tankette for Intelligent BioEnergy Agriculture
- is the first result of an R&D project which strives to develop an autonomous
mobile robotic system for carrying out a number of agricultural tasks in
sugarcane fields. The proposed concept consists of a semi-autonomous, low-cost,
dust and waterproof tankette-type vehicle, capable of infiltrating dense
vegetation in plantation tunnels and carry several sensing systems, in order to
perform mapping of hard-to-access areas and collecting samples. This paper
presents an overview of the robot mechanical design, the embedded electronics
and software architecture, and the construction of a first prototype.
Preliminary results obtained in field tests validate the proposed conceptual
design and bring about several challenges and potential applications for robot
autonomous navigation, as well as to build a new prototype with additional
functionality.Comment: 9 pages, 15 figure