Authors:

Alan Chen

Date Created:

Not specified

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About Paper:

By 2050, the world population is projected to reach 9.7 billion, and the agricultural industry is responsible for maintaining food security. Recent advances in the internet of things have facilitated the development of precision agriculture techniques that will improve resource efficiency by informing farmers about local crop needs. Researchers are developing distributed sensors for soil monitoring, as well as autonomous navigation algorithms for robotic agents, but the robots currently lack the ability to interact physically with the sensors. In this work, we introduce a novel robotic system that can be mounted on an unmanned ground vehicle to deploy sensors autonomously. This system uses an auger to drill a hole in the soil and plants a sensor using a rotating dispenser. The designed dispenser system successfully unloaded a full magazine of sensors during 90% of lab trials. Field tests will be conducted to evaluate the integrated system's ability to perform the deployment process from start to finish. The sensor deployment system provides farmers with a reliable means of deploying sensors over hundreds of acres and contributes to the automation of essential agricultural practices that have traditionally required significant human inputs.

Source:

Purdue University / 2023

Topics:

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Co-authors:

Alan Chen