Development of a control system for a weeding robot under the harsh environment

Abstract

In Japan, the number of farmers is decreasing, and the population is aging by the declining birthrate and aging population. One of the solutions to cope with this problem are the autonomous weeding robots to reduce the burden of agricultural work, and many types of devices have been developed in various research institutes around the world. However, the actual weeding work fields are a harsh dynamic environment with steep slopes, so that it is difficult to make robots run autonomously, and it has not yet been put into practical use. In this study, we proposed a control system that suppresses skidding caused by driving on steep slopes to improve the straight-line stability of the robot.