Ceres: the wheeled mobile agricultural robot designed for vegetables care

Abstract

Outdoor robots require high performance and safety, in the agricultural robot case, factors such as temperature, light conditions or obstacles, must be taken into account. However, despite the navigation problem, the robot must support agricultural tasks during the navigation through the crop, these agricultural tasks are highly related to the specific crop. In this paper, an agricultural robot (Ceres) for vegetable crops is described. The design of controllers for velocities and path following based on classical techniques and Lyapunov theory are shown. Likewise, agricultural tasks such as fumigating, fertilising and weeding are performed by Ceres, the implemented tasks are made using different tools coupled to a movable 3D system to act over the entire crop during the robot operation. The systems named above are described throughout the document. All subsystems are integrated using the Robotic Operating System (ROS). Finally, field test are performed to the entire robot over grass terrain.