Development of multiple banding-robot system for intelligent nitrogen application

• Main Authors: Amado, Dan Paulo E., Mirida, Joanna Katherine U.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2017
• Subjects: Fertilizer spreaders; Robotics; Electronics in agriculture; Agricultural innovations; Computer Engineering; Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/14888
• Institution: De La Salle University

Despite being an agricultural country, the Philippine agricultural sector remains the poorest in the country. Due to the absence of advanced tools for farming and inefficient management systems, cultivation of crops is not economically implemented. As a result, the country experiences food shortage and is forced to import crops from other countries. This research aims to improve certain areas affecting this concern, specifically on the methods of distributing fertilizers with optimal efficiency. This research introduced a multi-robot system capable of semi-automating the tedious but efficient ask of applying fertilizers called banding. With the use of Raspberry Pi and an infrared camera, computer vision was utilized in scanning the crop field in order to identify the plants that needed fertilizer based on its Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The robots running on Arduino Uno, Gizduino Mini and Rasberry PI were dependent on the NDVI provided by the aerial camera system. Furthermore, this research implemented vision-based algorithms in the location and navigation of the robots. The communication network of the system operated on Wi-Fi technology due to the mobile nature of the robots. The system was successfully tested and implemented on a local field in the Philippines.