Automated Crop Harvesting, Growth Monitoring and Disease Detection System for Vertical Farming Greenhouse

Abstract

Greenhouses are a type of cultivation method used to optimize the production of crops by using controlled climatic conditions and other external factors. They are widely used in agriculture both globally and locally. Vertical farming is the modern practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers in warehouses that aims to optimize and develop plant growth by using controlled environment agriculture. This type of agriculture concept is practiced in Sri Lanka at present. This research paper proposes a robot which consists of a specific navigation system and harvesting mechanism that can be used inside greenhouses. The proposed system can be implemented to harvest lettuce in the vertical farming greenhouses where lettuce needs to be harvested with care to ensure the supermarket quality. The above-mentioned system helps to detect the diseases of plants also where a lot of time can be saved, and less effort is made with the use of this type of implementation.