Computational Simulation of an Agricultural Robotic Rover for Weed Control and Fallen Fruit Collection—Algorithms for Image Detection and Recognition and Systems Control, Regulation, and Command

Abstract

The continuous rise in the world’s population has increased the need for food, resulting in a rise of agricultural holdings to ensure the supply of these goods directly to the populations and indirectly to all processing industries in the food business. This situation has led agriculture to reinvent itself and introduce new technics and tools to ensure tighter control of the crops and increase yields in food production. However, the lack of labor coupled with the evolution of weeds resistant to herbicides created a crisis in agricultural food production. However, with the growing evolution in electronics, automation, and robotics, new paths are emerging to solve these problems. A robotic rover was designed to optimize the tasks of weed control and collection of fallen fruits of an orchard. In weed control, a localized spraying system is proposed, therefore reducing the amount of applied herbicides. With fruit collection, it is possible to direct fallen fruits for animal feeding and possible to reduce microbial activity on the next campaign crops, therefore avoiding damage. This study proposes the simulation of this robotic rover on robotic simulation software. It also proposes the replication of a similar environment of an orchard to generate an algorithm that controls the rover on the tasks of localized spraying and fallen fruit collection. Creating and testing these algorithms by using a robotic simulator speed up and ease the evaluation of different scenarios and hypotheses, with the added benefit of being able to test two tasks simultaneously. This method also allows greater freedom and creativity because there are no concerns about hardware damage. It should also be noted that development costs are very low.

Development of a prototype of weeding robot

“…Therefore, the utilization of robots for weed eradication holds great significance, as it not only enhances agricultural output but also safeguards the well-being of farmers. The utilization of robots for weed killing has become commonplace worldwide [43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52]. Nevertheless, the utilization of these robots remains uncommon in Vietnam due to the relatively high cost of these machines, which is not affordable for the majority of Vietnamese farmers given the prevailing economic circumstances.…”

System design for precision weeding in secondary archaeological sites

“…On both rovers and drones, it is common to mount devices such as sensors or webcams; the limitation for aerial drones is the weight and location of the devices, however, there are specific devices of such size and weight that they do not interfere with the proper operation of drones. Since drones and rovers are already available for their use in agriculture, we propose using a drone (o rover) for early weed detection [20][21][22][23]. Furthermore, with the same drone, it is possible to intervene for weeding with minimal quantities of herbicide and sprayed only where necessary.…”

System for virtual simulation of robotic systems for agricultural purposes

“…CoppeliaSim является программой, которую разрабатывает Coppelia Robotics AG. При установке CoppeliaSim [3] мы получаем готовую среду моделирования, в которой уже имеется некоторое количество готовых примеров, документация.…”