Design and Test Performance of Weeding Robot using Circular Cutter and Pixy 2 Sensor

Abstract

Farm machinery is the backbone of agricultural mechanization in mitigating labour shortages and making farm work easy to handle.  Automation in agriculture can solve labour shortages problem, reduce crop production cost, sustains agricultural land and the environment, to increase farmer income. Automation is a very key factor in achieving agricultural mechanization revolution for increase in crop yield per hectare and quality food produce. The research presents a suitable design and model of a weeding robot to assist farmers control farm weeds effectively, to increase productivity. The study proposes a better way of fighting farm weeds instead of the gruesome attack on farm weeds. It can also promote commercial agriculture, release manpower for non-agricultural purposes, and facilitates organic farming. The proposed weeding robot uses a circular cutter with the blade having an angle that enables it cut/clear weed through centrifugal force power by continuous rotation servo motor. The mechanical part of the robot is designed with AutoCAD, and cross-checked for various actions. The components are print with 3D printer. Even though using a circular cutter for controlling weeds on farm fields was amongst the first step of development, techniques of perception, innovations, positioning, and cutting have been developed and or improved upon for resilient weed control. Further work development will be making the best of the vision control system using deep learning techniques and artificial intelligence. The deep learning techniques will be a vision and action control system to establish a more capable and accurate model for agricultural farm weeds detection.