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Assisting DIY Agricultural Robots Towards Their First Real-World Missions

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Information and Communication Technologies for Agriculture—Theme IV: Actions

Part of the book series: Springer Optimization and Its Applications ((SOIA,volume 185))

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Abstract

During the last years, a plethora of technological advances have appeared, with a strong impact on people’s lives and works. In response to this dynamic, people getting involved with agricultural practices, like scientists, students and farmers, should become familiar with and able to exploit systems of cutting-edge characteristics. In this regard, this work reports on recent university laboratory efforts to design, implement, upgrade and test prototype do-it-yourself (DIY) agricultural robotic ground vehicles of convincing size, in a cost-effective manner, vehicles that will be capable for “real-world” missions. These efforts also aim to bridge the gap between native educational approaches and working commercial solutions and to lower the cost barriers. Two basic robotic variants, of diverse nature, are presented, one mainly for performing all-terrain soil-specific measurements and another for spraying over the crops. Both vehicles can be seen as “vanilla” platforms, customizable to support a rich set of light-duty agricultural field operations. The “core” of these robots consists of popular microcontrollers assisted by selected electronic components, like smart navigation and/or camera units. The “logic” of these robots has been developed using both visual and textual programming environments. The efficiency of the proposed robots has been evaluated via remote interaction scenarios carried out through Wi-Fi and LoRa radio interfaces, while the provision for solar panel assistance and for energy consumption measuring has also increased their functionality.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the personnel of the Farm Machinery Laboratory and the students of the Dept. of Natural Resources Management and Agricultural Engineering of the Agricultural University of Athens, Greece, for their assistance in tools and labor, during the construction stages of the robotic vehicles. We would also like to thank the CEO and staff of Hellas Digital company for their great assistance in replying to our numerous questions and offering an abundant set of high-end electronic equipment for supporting the experiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Natural Resources Management and Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Dimitrios Loukatos & Konstantinos G. Arvanitis

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  1. Dimitrios Loukatos
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  2. Konstantinos G. Arvanitis
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Correspondence to Dimitrios Loukatos .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Bio-economy and Agri-technology (iBO), Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH), Thessaloniki, Greece

    Dionysis D. Bochtis

  2. Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

    Simon Pearson

  3. Institute for Bio-economy and Agri-technology (iBO), Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH), Thessaloniki, Greece

    Maria Lampridi

  4. R&D Department, Engineers for Business A/S, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Vasso Marinoudi

  5. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Panos M. Pardalos

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Loukatos, D., Arvanitis, K.G. (2021). Assisting DIY Agricultural Robots Towards Their First Real-World Missions. In: Bochtis, D.D., Pearson, S., Lampridi, M., Marinoudi, V., Pardalos, P.M. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies for Agriculture—Theme IV: Actions. Springer Optimization and Its Applications, vol 185. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84156-0_12

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