Fleets of robots for environmentally-safe pest control in agriculture

Abstract

Feeding the growing global population requires an annual increase in food production. This requirement suggests an increase in the use of pesticides, which represents an unsustainable chemical load for the environment. To reduce pesticide input and preserve the environment while maintaining the necessary level of food production, the efficiency of relevant processes must be drastically improved. robotic systems for effective weed and pest control aimed at diminishing the use of agricultural chemical inputs, increasing crop quality and improving the health and safety of production operators. To achieve this overall objective, a fleet of heterogeneous ground and aerial robots was developed and equipped with innovative sensors, enhanced endeffectors and improved decision control algorithms to cover a large variety of agricultural situations. This article describes the scientific and technical objectives, challenges and outcomes achieved in three common crops.

An Automatic Random Forest-OBIA Algorithm for Early Weed Mapping between and within Crop Rows Using UAV Imagery

“…The generated grid size is user-adjustable and follows the crop row orientation. In this experiment, a 0.5 × 0.5 m grid size was selected, in accordance with a site-specific sprayer prototype [40]. A new hierarchical structure was generated between the grid super-objects (upper level) and the crop-weed-bare soil classification (sub-objects at the lower level).…”

Le permaculteur et son robot : les microfermes et la gouvernance des nouvelles technologies

“…Les nouvelles technologies, sous les noms d'agriculture de précision ou d'agriculture numérique, suscitent beaucoup d'espoir quant à l'amélioration de la productivité et la diminution de l'impact environnemental (Bournigal et al, 2015). Nous assistons aujourd'hui à la transition des démonstrateurs avancés (Gonzalez-De-Santos et al, 2016) vers les premières solutions commerciales (voir Figure 2). Les tracteurs autonomes qui tracent leurs parcours tout seuls pendant que les drones cartographient les champs sont maintenant envisageables.…”

Approaches to the robotization of agricultural mobile machines

“…The only way to increase the efficiency of agricultural machinery without negatively affecting the soil is automation [6,7].…”