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Boosting innovation and research in the agricultural sector is crucial if farmers are asked to produce more with less. Precision agriculture offers different solutions to assist farmers in improving efficiency and reducing labor costs while respecting the legal requirements. Precision spraying enables the treatment of only the plants that require it, with the right amount of products. Our research group has developed a solution based on a reconfigurable vehicle with a high degree of automation for the distribution of plant protection products in vineyards and greenhouses. The synergy between the vehicle and the spraying management system we developed is an innovative solution with high technological content, and attempts to account for the current European and global directives in the field of agricultural techniques. The objectives of our system are the development of an autonomous vehicle and a spraying management system that allows safe and accurate autonomous spraying operations.

The system proposed in this paper is the Alicia 3 robot, which is based on the Alicia II module. Its aim is to inspect nonporous vertical walls like those of aboveground petrochemical tanks, with a wide range of surface materials and cleanliness levels. To meet this aim, pneumatic-like adhesion has been selected for the system. The system is also required to move over the surface at a suitable speed, to pass over obstacles and to have a suitable payload to carry mission-specific instrumentation. The robot design mainly aimed at finding a solution with a high degree of modularity, so that it can easily be disassembled for maintenance purposes and to replace consumable parts such as the wheels and the sealing, making its design easier. Some onboard control algorithms have also been introduced to increase system reliability and reduce energy consumption.

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