Project Title:

Application of Robotics for Advancement in Agriculture using IoT

(Author names: Pratik Parekh, Saif Sayyad, Vishwajeet More and Vaibhav Devshatwar)

(Affiliation: MIT Academy of Engineering, Pune )

(Guides: Nutan Bansode Maam and Rushikesh Borse Sir)

Introduction:

Food is the man’s most basic requirement. Man has become the center part in food production,
where this has become the limiting factor. All through the ages men have struggled to produce more
and superior food for increasing population. The use of technology advancement is to increase the
productivity and the safety of an operator. Automation technology has been used in every domain
like construction, manufacturing and etc. But now it has been incorporated in the field of
agriculture.

The term agriculture is coined from two Latin words ager means field and culturia means cultivation.
In agriculture most of the energy consuming work is done by the farmers. For example, in the
vegetable field, the farmers should lift the heavy bags of vegetables at the time of harvest and
during fertilizing time they carry the bags of fertilizers. These operations are repetitive, energy
consuming work for farmers. After the manual operators, then comes the tractor-based operator
such as the power units that are exposed to high noise and vibration, which is very hazardous to
health of the farmers.

The development of Agricultural Robots was started from the past 1980s and these agrobots are
mainly used for seeding, spraying and weeding process. The AGROBOT is built by using sensors and
some of the enabling technologies like wireless communication and GPS. Kawamura and co-workers
developed the apple-harvesting robot for harvesting apples. Many of the robots are still in the stage
of research and development. An efficient robot is one which must have a high performance with
the low cost price. Over the past, agriculture has advanced from a labouring occupation to a highly
technical business, using a wide variety of tools and machines, but now the researchers are looking
for robots to do the agricultural activities.
Background study:

The initial stage of evolution, automatic vehicle guidance, has been studied for a great number of
years, with a number of revolutions investigated as early as the 1920s. The idea of completely
autonomous agricultural vehicles is far from newly discovered. Examples of initial driverless tractor
prototypes using leader cable guidance procedure date back to the 1950s and 1960s.In 1980s, the
possibility for integrating computers with image sensors contributed opportunities for machine
vision based guidance systems. In mid-1980s researcher’s at Michigan state university and Texas
A&M university were exploring machine vision guidance. Further, throughout that decade, a
program for robotic harvesting of oranges was successfully performed at the University of Florida.
In India during the decades of 1970s and 1980s there was a dramatic increase in productivity which
is credited to a sequence of steps that led to the accessibility of farm technologies frequently
described as green revolution. The vital sources of agricultural extension during this span were the
spread of modern crop varieties, intensification of input use and investments leading to expansion in
the irrigated area. In regions where green revolution technologies had major influence, growth has
now reduced. New methodologies are now essential to push out yield frontiers, utilize inputs more
productively and transform to more maintainable and higher value cropping patterns. In 1997,
agricultural automation had become a vital subject along with the advocacy of precision agriculture.
Many of the Indian researchers also designed many of the AgriRobot some of them are given below:
 Mahesh R. Pundkar et. al. studied the performance of seeding, plowing and plant cutting
devices by using image processing algorithm using flash magic. They also studied the effect
of seed depth, seed spacing, miss seeding ratio and performance seed sowing device on
germination of seed and efficiency of yield crop.
 Aditya kawadaskar et. al. redesigned and tested the seed sowing machine using CAD
package like PROE. They concluded that multipurpose seed sowing machine maintain row
spacing, controlling seed and fertilizer rate, controlling the seed and fertilizer depth.
 Ajith Abraham, He Guo, and Hongbo Liu., This is highly adaptable and self-organized system
of robots is a new approach to co-ordination of multi robot systems.
 B. Mursec et. al. presented two sowing machines pneumatic vacuum sowing machine OLT
and pneumatic pressure sowing machine Aeromat-Becker for interval sowing, differing in
the mode of operation for cultivation of sugar beet. They concluded that on the pneumatic
vacuum sowing machine OLT the optimum distance between seeds in the sowing row is
reached with 4.5 - 8 km/h speed and on the pneumatic pressure sowing machine Aeromat -
Becker with 4.5 - 10 km/h.
 Joginder Singh studied the effect of farm mechanization on Indian economy. He concluded
that Production and productivity cannot be enhanced with primitive and traditional
methods. Thus, selective mechanization is the need of the future.
 Mahesh K. Ashatankar studied that the machine can be advanced for sowing seeds in farm
with particular distance between seed is adjusted. It can automatically sow seed in land. It
can also be used as fertilizer sowing instead of seed. The basic requirements of this machine
for small scale cropping, they should be suitable for small farms, simple in design and
technology and versatile for use in different farm operations. An automatically operated
 template row planting is well designed and developed to improve planting efficiency and
reduce drudgery involved in manual planting method. Seed planting is also possible for
different size of seeds at variable depth and space between two seeds. Also it results in
increased seed planting, seed or fertilizer placement accuracies and it is made of durable
and low cost material affordable for the small scale peasant farmers.
 Simon Blackmore Developed agricultural needs to find new ways to improve efficiency. One
approach is to utilize available information technologies in the form of more intelligent
machines to reduce and target energy inputs in more effective ways than in the past.
Precision Farming has shown benefits of this approach but we can now move towards a new
generation of equipment. The advent of autonomous system architectures gives us the
opportunity to develop a complete new range of agricultural equipment based on small
smart machines that can do the right thing, in the right place, at the right time in the right
way.

The automatic agricultural vehicles are categorized into four categories

1. Guidance: To know how the vehicle navigates.
2. Detection: How the vehicle extracts the features of environmental field.
3. Action: How well the vehicle executes its task. Example radicchio harvesting.
4. Mapping: The construction of the map of agricultural field with its relevant features [9].

The main motivation for developing agricultural automation technology is reduced labour force, a
phenomenon common in the developed world. Other causes are the requirement for upgraded food
quality, security in terms of inspection of contaminants in food grains and saving the wastage of
resources and to save time from manual work and to improve efficiency of the agricultural products
and also to increase the productivity, accuracy and enhanced operation safety.

Literature survey:

Sr Author Published Title About Research Paper

No. Year

This paper offers a system which

1.
K. Gowthami, Smart farming using performs the seeding process in the
K. Greeshma, and 2019 agri-bot
N. Supraja. agricultural field. The main idea
behind this development is to
perform agricultural tasks without
human intervention and to
implement a prototype of an
effective low cost agribot. This
project is based on a wireless
communication by making use of
Arduino and Bluetooth.
 This paper designs and develops a
2.
G.Sowmya, and Automatic weed robot to detect weed in corn crop,
J.Srikanth 2017 detection and smart
herbicide spray robot by making use of image processing.
for corn fields The advantages of this project is
time saving as it detects the beets
with the help of a camera and the
herbicides are sprayed on the
infected crop, saves the farmers
from tedious work.
This paper proposed a multitasking
Muhammad Ayaz, IoT Based Smart IOT based technology in the
3. Mohammad 2019 Agriculture-towards
Ammad-uddin, making the fields talk” agricultural field. The idea of this
Zubair Sharif, structure is to help farmers produce
Ali Mansour,
and el- Hadi M. high quality yields to meet the
Aggoune, rising demand of food with the
increased population, by making
use of wireless sensors, UAVs, cloud
computing, and communication
technologies. the system proposes
a complete technology based
farming from the start till the
harvesting which includes very less
human interaction.
This proposed agrobot consists of
V. Radhika, Design and Arduino, solar panel, GSM module
4. B. Sharmila, 2019 Implementation of
R. Ramya, and Agrobot with and sensors. solar panels are used to
M. Gopisri Automatic Sun charge the robot. the ultrasonic
Tracking
sensors detect the hurdles and also
helps in digging of holes for sowing
seeds at a predefined distance. pH
sensors help in the computation of
the moisture content in the soil.
Electrochemical sensor helps in
 identifying the fertility of soil and
the optical sensor helps in the
movement of the robot. The main
aim behind this system is to reduce
farmers burden and help obtain
good amount of yields.
This structure has a vehicle operated
Shubham AGROBOT: Sowing and ATMEGA328 microcontroller which
5. Khandelwal, 2017 Irrigating Farming
Neha Kaushik, and Machine acts as the master operator. It
Sagar Sharma, performs four functions such as
ploughing, seeding and harvesting
of crops and irrigation. solar panels
are made used in order to recharge
the batteries. The robot moves
automatically if the length and the
width of the field is provided. the
aim of this system is to help farmers
with good yield of crops and to
minimize the usage of non-
renewable sources.
This system is controlled by ARM
Ponnu Priya Saju, AGROBOT: Sowing and CORTEX M3 based microcontroller.
6. and Anila P.V 2019 Irrigating Farming
Machine” FC-28 is used for soil moisture
detection. LPC1769 microcontroller
controls the seed sowing and
irrigation operation. Relay is used to
carry out the watering operation,
the microcontroller sends in a high
signal when the moisture level is low
and the relay is turned on. This
prototype is built using aluminium
square tubes and foam board in
order to reduce the weight. The
 main aim behind this system is to
help farmers with precision farming.
This paper brings froth the
Amaresh.A.M. IOT Enabled pesticide information about the
7. Anagha G Rao, 2020 Sprayer with security
Fennaz Afreen, and system by using solar implementation of agricultural
Moditha.N, energy robot through an android
application. this robot is used for
spraying of pesticides with the help
of solar powered pumping system.
The movement of the robot betwixt
the crops is monitored by the farmer
with the help of android application.
If there's an invader in the field then
the robot captures the image of the
invader and sends it to the farmer.
This robot can be used to during the
COVID sanitization for spraying of
sanitizer. the main agenda of this
project is to build a nominal
equipment which can be afforded by
farmers, in order to increase the
yield of the crops and reduce
contact with the chemical
pesticides.
This proposed Agribot consists of IR,
Sivaprasad Athikkal, Solar Powered Agribot moisture and temperature sensors.
8. Ambarish Pradhan, 2020 for FarmMonitoring
Abhilash Gade, and using Interent of In order to make use of the naturally
A. Mahidhar Reddy Things(IOT)” available sunlight they have used
solar panels. The sensors check the
temperature of the soil and irrigates
the land depending on the
temperature and then feeds the
data to the cloud. this robot will
change the path if an obstacle
 occurs. the main intention behind
this project is to build a economical
robot to help the farmers and to
make use of the available natural
resources.
The paper provides information
Mr.V.Gowrishankar IoT Based Precision
9. 2018 about the demonstration and
and Agriculture Using
Dr.K.Venkatachalam AgriBot working of Agribot controlled by IoT.
This robot carries out varied
functions such as ploughing, seeding
and spraying of pesticides. servo
motor and solenoid valves are
implemented in order to the
mechanism of seeding and spraying
of pesticides. the moto of this
project was to aid the farmers with
a good yield of crops and to avoid
direct contact with chemical
pesticides.
This proposed agribot consists of
V. Radhika, Design and Arduino, solar panel, GSM module
10. B. Sharmila, 2019 Implementation of
R. Ramya, and Agrobot with and sensors. solar panels are used to
M. Gopisri Automatic Sun charge the robot. the ultrasonic
Tracking
sensors detect the hurdles and also
helps in digging of holes for sowing
seeds at a predefined distance. pH
sensors help in the computation of
the moisture content in the soil.
Electrochemical sensor helps in
identifying the fertility of soil and
the optical sensor helps in the
movement of the robot. The main
aim behind this system is to reduce
 farmers burden and help obtain
good amount of yields.
This paper designs and develops a
Patrick M. Piper and Designing of an robot for monitoring of soil. this
11. Jacob Vogel 2015 Autonomous Soil:
Monitoring Robot” robot is capable of sensing the
moisture an the temperature of the
soil through stevens hydra probe II
and it consists of GPS to navigate.

Proposed work:
In this work (Major Project) a robot, farm robot, will be designed, built and demonstrated to carry
out ploughing, seeding, grass cutting in an agriculture field. It is expected that robot will assist the
farmers in improving the efficiency of operations in their farms. It is aimed at increasing the
productivity and reducing the labour involved, this robot is designed to execute the basic functions
required to be carried out in farms. The robot performs the tasks like digging the ground, sowing the
seeds and backfilling the soil automatically in a sequence without human intervention. Thus an
effort will be made so that the robot becomes an aid to the farmers. The design is accepted and
unique compared to the existing robots. This robot can be controlled by using algorithm for the
comfort of farmers and interfaced with microcontroller and will be connected with farmers using iot
applications. It is expected that this robot will change the trend of farming in the upcoming days
from manual to automation. The implementation of AGROBOT will be significant saving in the term
of time, efficiency, man power, wastage of resources and also it works at much cheaper price. This
also makes farming easy to learn and implement.
References:

1. K. Gowthami, K. Greeshma, N. Supraja, “Smart farming using agribot” , International Journal of

Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973- 4562 Volume 14, Number 6, 2019.

2. G.Sowmya, J.Srikanth, “Automatic weed detection and smart herbicide spray robot for corn fields
“,International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR) Volume 6,
Issue 1, January 2017.

3. Patrick M. Piper and Jacob Vogel “Designing of an Autonomous Soil:Monitoring Robot”,2015,IEEE.

4. Muhammad Ayaz, Mohammad Ammad-uddin, Zubair Sharif, Ali Mansour, and el-Hadi M. Aggoune
“ IoT Based Smart Agriculture towards making the fields talk”, 2019 IEEE.

5. C. Jeeva, Saher Mairaj, Archit keshav Gangal and Farheen “Agricultural Automation System with
Field Assisting Robot-AgroBot”, International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Volume
118 No. 20 2018.

6. V. Radhika, B. Sharmila, R. Ramya, M. Gopisri “. Design and Implementation of Agrobot with

Automatic Sun Tracking”, International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology (IJEAT)
ISSN: 2249 – 8958, Volume-9 Issue-2, December, 2019.

7. Shubham Khandelwal, Neha Kaushik, Sagar Sharma, “AGROBOT: Sowing and Irrigating Farming
Machine”,Volume 8, No. 5, May-June 2017International Journal of Advanced Research.

8. Ponnu Priya Saju, Anila P.V, “AGROBOT: Sowing and Irrigating Farming Machine”, International
Journal for Research in Engineering Application & Management (IJREAM) ISSN : 2454-9150 Vol-
05, Issue03, June 2019.

9. Mr. V. Gowrishankar Dr. K. Venkatachalam, “IoT Based Precision Agriculture using Agribot”,
Global Research and Development Journal for Engineering | Volume 3 | Issue 5 | April 2018

10. Amaresh A M , Anagha G Rao , Fenaaz Afreen , Moditha N , Syeda Arshiya, “IOT Enabled Pesticide
Sprayer with Security System by using Solar Energy”, International Journal of Engineering
Research & Technology (IJERT),2020.

11. Sivaprasad Athikkal, Ambarish Pradhan, Abhilash Gade, A. Mahidhar Reddy, “Solar Powered
Agribot for farm monitoring Internet of things(IOT)”, International Journal of Electrical
Engineering and Technology (IJEET) Volume 11, Issue 3, May 2020.