Development of snake robot for weeding rice paddies after drying in the middle

-Operation experiment in rice paddies after drying in the middle-

Abstract

In recent years, the number of key farmers has been declining and the age structure has been shifting to older age groups, resulting in a serious labor shortage. Also, weeding in rice paddies is hard. In this paper, we propose a robot for weeding in rice paddies after drying in the middle based on a weeding method of stirring mud in “Aigamo agriculture” and a mechanism similar to that of snakes. We aim to improve the growing rice efficiency by development of the snake robot. This report describes experiment in simulated environment and rice paddies after drying in the middle, and production of the improved prototype.