Development of an Autonomous Agricultural Vehicle to Measure Soil Respiration

Soil respiration (SR), the carbon dioxide flux produced by organisms in soil, is not well quantified and understood compared to other soil characteristics. Currently, environmental scientists collect SR data either by manually taking measurements in the field, which is time intensive, or by receiving information from permanently placed sensors, which limits the locations where data is collected. This project aims to provide an efficient means of collecting spatially diverse data for environmental research and agricultural monitoring by designing and constructing an autonomous ground vehicle that can navigate to specific points of interest, collect SR and other ambient atmospheric measurements, and transmit the data remotely to a base station. To do so, the robot relies on a variety of subsystems including the robot's frame, differential steering, a mechanical arm that deploys an array of ground sensors, a radio network, and on-board temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed, and GPS ambient atmospheric sensors. The vehicle will use the Robot Operating System (ROS) along with GPS, motion planning, and LIDAR to navigate between user-specified sampling locations while avoiding obstacles, which will minimize the need for human labor and allow more areas to be visited for data collection as compared to permanently placed sensors. The proposed autonomous system will help environmental scientists and agricultural managers collect and analyze soil data in the field.