GoAgro: Design and development of a precision farming robot

Abstract

Since a long time ago, agriculture has been a significant part of the Indian economy. 18% of India's gross domestic product is produced by the agriculture sector (GDP). A better answer for precision agriculture is provided by robotics and the internet of things. Selective harvesting is necessary when picking fruits or vegetables like tomatoes and apples. In traditional farming, each fruit is hand-picked by a worker, requiring a huge amount of labour to carry out selective farming. We suggest a robot that helps farmers with a variety of labor-intensive chores, such as selective crop harvesting and qualitative segregation, while also simultaneously providing data on crop health, soil nutritional status, and crop shelf-life detection. An android application is used to analyse, process, and send the obtained data to the farmer. Later, the weight, colour, and health of the particular crop are checked to grade its quality. The fruit is subsequently moved into the designated container after being graded. Spoiled or overripe fruits and vegetables would be plucked and dropped so as not to interfere with the plant's growth. A harvesting arm on the proposed robot would reach the fruit or vegetable and pick it from the plant or tree. The work given here is a mini-project that is taken up as a part of the curriculum completed by electronics and communication engineering students in the second year of the electronics & communication engineering department at Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering in Bangalore.