Modeling and Control of the Vitirover Robot for Weed Management in Precision Agriculture

Abstract

Weeds management is a repetitive and crucial task for agricultural settings. This paper considers a four-wheeled robot, called Vitirover, designed for grass-cutting and weed management tasks in vineyards. The robot steering mechanism employs differential rotation of rear wheels, mounted on a universal joint. First, the kinematic model of the robot is derived. Next, based on the kinematic model, a Model Predictive Control (MPC) formulation is designed to encourage the robot to follow a desired path while targeting weeds in the environment using dynamic weights. Simulation results in Gazebo simulator are provided to validate the overall system.