Abstract
In recent years, consciousness of people is increasing about safety of foods. The safety of the rice which we usually eat is gathering attention too. It is said that organic farming is one of great farming methods because it does not use weed killers and chemical fertilizer and so on. However, in organic farming, farmers must remove weeds with their hands. It is a heavy labor for them. Therefore, in this study, we have developed a weed suppression robot which helps organic farming. We designed a robot hand, a mechanical brushing device attached at the end of the robot arm of the autonomous mobile robot, which suppresses growth of weeds. The robot is controlled by remote control from the outside of the rice field. We have verified the effectiveness of weed suppression through indoor rice field experiments.
