Autonomous Weed skewer

The autonomous weed skewer is a project designed as a solution to the daily life problems of the farmers' community. However, it is an improved version of previously existing systems. The scope of the project is in the agricultural industry. The proposed system reduces the manual costs of the labor.

Project Title

Autonomous Weed skewer

Project Area of Specialization

Artificial Intelligence

Project Summary

The autonomous weed skewer is a project designed as a solution to the daily life problems of the farmers' community. However, it is an improved version of previously existing systems. The scope of the project is in the agricultural industry. The proposed system reduces the manual costs of the labor. Crops deficiency due to effective herbicides, manually hand weeding to reduce weed competition and produce profitable yields.

Robotic technology is a way to reduce agriculture dependency on herbicides, enlightening its sustainability, and reducing its environmental influence. The Detection and identification of weeds under the field is an extreme challenge. 

Autonomous weed skewer is designed with an aim toward the automation of agriculture's non-mechanized and drudging tasks, hand weed control. In the Weed skewer system, the plant detection and classification between crop and weeds presented the greatest technical challenge for development. These challenges were suspected a quite difficult task which is usually done by laborers at high prices which is not in reach of every farmer. The main focus of this project is to detect weeds present in the field and remove them so that a keen decision will be made that what to do next and move the operation further ahead.

The project “Autonomous Weed Skewer” will be designed with the purpose to provide ease of task to the farmer community by reducing hand labor and/or pesticide requirements. This project will help to accommodate the costs given to laborers for hand weeding control. Furthermore, it helps to detect weeds in crops where human may do some mistake as is quite a difficult task. The project will enable us to help in all situations to perform quick weed removal actions to save as many crops as possible.

This project is a small development towards weeds removal with low cost, but different other techniques can be adopted to enhance the working capabilities of this system to meet requirements.  Furthermore, the coding and development methods of the hardware will enable to learn different coding schemes, hardware development, handling and help to estimate the maximum cost required developing an error-free and excellent system to provide such services with greater probability.

Project Objectives

The main design objectives of this weed control unit are high increasing yield as well as it is one of the tedious operations in crop production. The purpose of this project is to increase weed throughput, precise treatment, and flexibility. Because of labor costs, more time to remove weeds manually by hand is unfavorable.

Robotic technology is a way to reduce agriculture dependency on herbicides, enlightening its sustainability, and reducing its environmental influence. The Detection and identification of weeds under the field is an extreme challenge. The autonomous weeder contains an actuator that will be used to mechanically remove weeds instead of the old conventional method to remove weeds manually by hand.  The scope of this project, "Autonomous Weed skewer" holds promise on the road to the automation of agriculture's unmechanized hand weeding. Crops deficiency due to effective herbicides, manually hand weeding to reduce weed competition and produce profitable yields. The Autonomous Weed skewer consists of an integrated servo motor, Arduino along with some other components, which is combined with the computer vision assisted system so that it can detect the positions of the crop, and then it will guide the Weed skewer to execute mechanical weeding operations to remove detected weeds without damaging the crops. So that’s the manner in which the robotic equipment is developed to overcome the challenge to differentiate between crops and weeds. Here the main objective of the project is to develop a system that “learns” the difference between the weeds and crops crop. The project's task is to build a cost-effective and sustainable solution for weed management in crops.

Project Implementation Method

The autonomous weed skewer is a project designed as a solution to the daily life problems of the farmers' community. However, it is an improved version of previously existing systems. It is a hardware based project and is designed after passing through different stages.

Each of the components is a complete module in itself and only requires the programming to work as required to do. All the hardware is ready-made and only programming is done on each component to perform the required task from it.

We have used various components in this project/ Some of the main parts are;

• Manipulator: 6 DOF MANIPULATOR ALUMINUM ROBOT ARM (HAND) WITH CLAW AND BASE 
• DC Motor Shield: ARDUINO STEPPER MOTOR/SERVO/DC MOTOR SHEILD
• Encoder: ET900 4-DRIVE TRACK-TYPE METAL TANK ROBOT CHASSIS WITH ENCODERS
• Chassis Trolley: ET300 DOUBLE ALUMINIUM ROOF ROBOT CHASSIS TROLLEY
• Battery: 4200MAH 30~40C 14.8V (4S) LIPO BATTERY
• Infrared Tracking Sensor: FOUR WAY IR INFRARED TRACKING / 4 CHANNEL IR LINE TRACKING /FOLLOWING MODULE
• Power Control: 5000MAH 3S 11.1 V 25C HUNGER NANO TECH LIPO PACK BATTERY
• Raspberry Pi
• Camera

We have used all these devices and then we have written the code for each component.  The robot is designed in a manner that it can move in the fields autonomously and can detect weeds. after that, it uses the robotic arm to remove the weeds from that crop without harming the crop. For detection, the robot uses a camera. All the model is deployed on the Raspberry Pi and Arduino Mega 3 is also acting as a microcontroller. The robot only takes two input parameters before working it needs to know the area of the field along with the images of crop grown so after training it can work in that area and remove the weeds.

Benefits of the Project

Out of uncountable advantage of Autonomous weed skewer, some are explained below;

• It frees your hands and liberates your mind so that you can concentrate on more important tasks for your business.
• An advantage of the machine vision precision chemical application system is that non-selective herbicides can be used later.
• Human-oriented weeding mechanisms (hand-weeding/ human-controlled machinery) usually require more labor-intensive human resources.
• Autonomous Weed skewer removes weeds from crops all by itself.
• Autonomous Weed skewer gives you more time to focus on the profitability of your business.
• It uses up very little energy and its mechanical weeding technique allows you to save on other supplies.
• The Autonomous Weed skewer follows the crop rows of your field and automatically guides itself.
• Ease to the farmer community.
• The Autonomous Weed skewer reduces labor costs and saves time and energy.
• The  Autonomous Weed skewer is less expensive it is the most important demand.
• The system will provide less complexity in usage and calculation of results.
• The proposed design should be easy to implement and maintain.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The final deliverable will be the robot that will remove weeds from any crops you need. The area of the field and the images of the grown crop are given to the Autonomous Weed skewer for training purposes. Then the robot will identify the weeds from the crops in an area given to it. The robot will not go out of that area and nor it will harm any other crop. It will just move in the field and detect the presence of weeds. If any kind of weed is detected the robot will use its arm to pluck off the weed from the crop. So this can be used in the agricultural industry and as well as by farmers to speed up their task and bring preciseness to the task.

Final Deliverable of the Project

Hardware System

Core Industry

IT

Other Industries

Agriculture

Core Technology

Artificial Intelligence(AI)

Other Technologies

Internet of Things (IoT), Robotics

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com