Accurate Crop Spraying with RTK and Machine Learning on an Autonomous Field Robot

Abstract

W. M. T. D. Wijesundara, T. D. Wanigathunga, M. N. C. Waas, R. T. Hithanadura and S. R. Munasinghek

The agriculture sector requires a lot of labor and resources. Hence, the farmers are constantly being pressed for technology and automation to be cost-effective. In this context, autonomous robots can play a very important role in carrying out agricultural tasks such as spraying, sowing, inspection, and even harvesting. This paper presents one such autonomous robot that is able to identify plants and spray agro-chemicals precisely. The robot uses machine vision technologies to find plants and RTKGPS technology to navigate the robot along a predetermined path. The experiments were conducted in a field of potted plants, and successful results have been obtained.

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