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Determining variations in fields is important for precision farming applications. Precision farming is used to determine, analyse, and manage factors such as temporal and spatial variability to obtain maximum profit, sustainability, and environmental protection. However, precision farming is excessively dependent on soil and plant test processes. Furthermore, test processes are time-consuming, laborious and expensive. These processes also cannot be performed quickly by humans. For these reasons, autonomous robots should be designed and developed for the detection of field variations and variable-rate applications. In this study, a remote-controlled and GPS-guided autonomous robot was designed and developed, which can be controlled via the 3G internet and is suitable for imageprocessing applications. The joystick is used to manually remotely control the robot movements in any direction or speed. Real-time video transmission to the remote computer can be accomplished with a camera placed on the vehicle. Navigation software was developed for steering the robot autonomously. In the results of the field test for the navigation software, it was found that the linear target point precision ranged from 10 to 12 cm and the distributed target point precision ranged from 15 to 17 cm.

Soil compaction is one of the main negative factors that limits plant growth and crop yield. Therefore, it is important to determine the soil resistance level and map it for the field to find solutions for the negative effects of the compaction. Nowadays, high powered communication technology and computers help us on this issue within the approach of precision agriculture applications. This study is focused on the design of a penetrometer, which can make instantaneous soil resistance measurements in the soil horizontally and data acquisition software based on the GPS (Global Positioning System). The penetrometer was designed using commercial 3D parametric solid modelling design software. The data acquisition software was developed in Microsoft Visual Basic.NET programming language. After the design of the system, manufacturing and assembly of the system was completed and then a field experiment was carried out. According to the data from GPS and penetration resistance values which are collected in Microsoft SQL Server database, a Kriging method by ArcGIS was used and soil resistance was mapped in the field for a soil depth of 40 cm. During operation, no faults, either in mechanical and software parts, were seen. As a result, soil resistance values of 0.2 MPa and 3 MPa were obtained as minimum and maximum values, respectively. In conclusion, the experimental results showed that the designed system works quite well in the field and the horizontal penetrometer is a practical tool for providing on-line soil resistance measurements. This study contributes to further research for the development of on-line soil resistance measurements and mapping within the precision agriculture applications.

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