Energy- and Safety-Aware Operation of Battery-Powered Autonomous Robots in Agriculture

Abstract

To improve food security and environmental sustainability amid the global crisis of climate change and nutrition quality requirements as well as low-cost agricultural needs and electricity issues, particularly in developing countries like India, it is essential to combine autonomy and newer energy storage methods with traditional agriculture. Existing field robotic mechanisms, path planning methods, and battery energy management systems are designed independent of each other. To ensure energy efficient and safety aware operation of autonomous agricultural robots, coordination between aforementioned techniques is necessary. With the aim to provide such solution, in this work we propose a framework to integrate robot mechanism, path planning, and battery management system. Simulations are performed to validate the performance of the algorithm.