Galileo Enhanced Solution for Pest Detection and Control in Greenhouses with Autonomous Service Robots

Abstract

European agriculture is facing numerous challenges such as population growth, climate change, resource shortages and increased competition, and hence the challenge today is to produce “more with less”. Greenhouses protect crops from adverse weather conditions allowing year-round production and integrated crop management approaches provide better control over pests and diseases. However, without adequate controls the intensification of greenhouse crop production can create favourable conditions for devastating infestation. The Horizon 2020 (H2020) GreenPatrol project has developed an innovative and efficient robotic solution for Integrated Pest Management in crops, which has the ability to navigate inside greenhouses while performing early pest detection and control tasks in an autonomous way. The main developments include precise positioning to allow autonomous navigation and provide accurate and detailed pest maps in greenhouses (light indoor environments), perception with visual sensing for on-line pest detection, and strategies for manipulation and motion planning based on pest monitoring feedback. This paper presents an overview of the GreenPatrol system, including the localization and navigation functions and the pest detection abilities, and shows results of real-time demonstrations of the system in a representative environment.