A duck robot for weeding work on the paddy field

Abstract

In recent years at the rice cultivation, it has been a problem that sprinkling inorganic manure and inorganic agricultural chemicals pollutes environment while raising harvest. Then, growing the rice by organic agriculture, and no agrochemicals and decrease agricultural chemicals has come to be desired earnestly. However, in organic agriculture or agrochemical-free cultivation, it is indispensable to weeds prevention of the breeding and extermination. The work for weed is the bad labor environment on the man in the paddy field of a summer time and which needs physical strength. Recently it is widely used, that small animals, such as a duck and a carp, are bred in a paddy field, and they make the extermination of weeds. However, using a duck for extermination work also has a problem. Namely, training from the egg of a duck, it is because the exclusion from the paddy field after becoming large is difficult. Then, it considered doing these work using small autonomous robots. Through the experiments the effectiveness of the proposed robot is certificated.