Fleets of robots for environmentally-safe pest control in agriculture

• DOI: 10.1007/s11119-016-9476-3
• Publication Date: 2016-10-20T04:28:53Z
• Authors: Pablo Gonzalez-de...; Angela Ribeiro; Cesar Fernandez-Q...; Francisca Lopez-G...; Michael Brandstoe...; Slobodanka Tomic; Stefania Pedrazzi; Andrea Peruzzi; Gonzalo Pajares; George Kaplanis; Manuel Perez-Ruiz; Constantino Valero; Jaime del Cerro; Marco Vieri; Gilles Rabatel; Benoit Debilde
• Keywords: Precision Agriculture

Feeding the growing global population requires an annual increase in food production. This requirement suggests use of pesticides, which represents unsustainable chemical load for environment. To reduce pesticide input and preserve environment while maintaining necessary level production, efficiency relevant processes must be drastically improved. Within this context, research strived to design, develop, test assess a new generation automatic robotic systems effective weed pest control aimed at diminishing agricultural inputs, increasing crop quality improving health safety production operators. achieve overall objective, fleet heterogeneous ground aerial robots was developed equipped with innovative sensors, enhanced end-effectors improved decision algorithms cover large variety situations. article describes scientific technical objectives, challenges outcomes achieved three common crops.