Requirements and system design for a robot performing selective cleaning in young forest stands

Abstract

Cleaning is a silvicultural tending operation, primarily aimed at improving the growing conditions of the remaining trees in young stands (ca. 3 m of height). The cost of cleaning has increased in comparison to other forest operations, and the annually cleaned area has decreased in Sweden. Therefore, cleaning with robots might be the key to improve profitability. This paper aims at assessing some design requirements, and suggesting an architecture for a robot cleaning in young forest stands, based on reviewed literature and our own research. The results of cleaning performed by robots have to reach acceptable results and be done at a competitive cost. The robot has to find, select, and handle trees in the whole assigned area according to given instructions. Furthermore, it must be safe for humans, capable of moving safely within the forest environment, and be able to handle snow and other prevalent boreal weather conditions. The vehicleÕs size and mass are of importance, and bear on its ability to manoeuvre among remaining stems. Generally, the robot must be capable of operating independently and unattended for several hours in a dynamic and non-deterministic environment. Obstacle avoidance and target identification are identified as the most difficult problems. Machine vision, radar, and laser scanners are promising techniques for both obstacle avoid- Journal of Terramechanicsance, tree identification, and tool control. The proposed architecture is based on a hybrid between the reactive and the hierarchical robot paradigms.

Evaluation and stability comparison of different vehicle configurations for robotic agricultural operations on side-slopes

“…However, today, the focus is on creating smart machines able to cope flexibly with nonstructured or semi-structured environments and, therefore, able to perform operations and activities autonomously (Billingsley et al, 2008). Agricultural robotics has been an interesting research field since the 1980s, especially from the point of view of the design (Sørensen et al, 2010;Vestlund & Hellstr€ om, 2006). There were many attempts to introduce robots or semiautomated machines in very different field activities, such as: planting, weeding, crop and environmental monitoring, pest control, crop harvesting, fruit picking (Asimopoulos, Parisses, Smyrnaios, & Germanidis, 2013;Bak & Jakobsen, 2004;Bakker, Asselt, Bontsema, Mü ller, & Straten, 2010;De-An, Jidong, Wei, Ying, & Yu, 2011;Gobor, Schulze Lammers, & Martinov, 2013;Greenman et al, 2003;Hamner, Bergerman, & Singh, 2011;Kondo, Yamamoto, Yata, & Kurita, 2008;Slaughter, Giles, & Downey, 2008;Yaghoubi et al, 2013).…”

The on-line coverage algorithm and localization technique of the intelligent cleaning robot

“…Relative position, e.g., distance to an obstacle, is an extremely important function and has to be designed for high accuracy and reliable error detection. [23] The basic techniques for localizations are possibly enhanced by sensor fusion with encoders and gyroscope.…”

Research of segmentation method on color image of Lingwu long jujubes based on the maximum entropy

“…Not only is image segmentation basic of image processing which effects directly the performance of image recognition but also it is a difficulty for digital image processing. Sweden, Canada, and Finland research image segmentation algorithms based on machine vision [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. No algorithm, however, is aimed at Lingwu long jujubes.…”