Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle in Precision Agriculture – The VELOS project

Abstract

One of the dimensions of precision agriculture is the use of intelligent ground or air vehicles for periodic autonomous examination of plants or soil. Although there are published articles on smart agricultural vehicles in the literature, we have discovered that there are still many improvements that can be achieved either in hardware or software. After reviewing all the related works, we decided on the key features that need to be improved and thus we present the construction of an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) that can act proactively to reduce potential diseases in crops. In designing the UGV, emphasis was placed on the robustness and durability of the structure. The developed navigation algorithm takes real-time data to plan the optimal route to ensure optimal energy efficiency in relation to the distance covered. To achieve optimal results, we use position optimization algorithms. In this way we achieve the use of the coated vehicle in various linear crops.