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Published in:
2006 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
An Autonomous Weeding Robot for Organic Farming
Authors : Tijmen Bakker, Kees van Asselt, Jan Bontsema, Joachim Müller, Gerrit van Straten
Published in: Field and Service Robotics
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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The objective of this research is the replacement of hand weeding in organic farming by a device working autonomously at field level. The autonomous weeding robot was designed using a structured design approach, giving a good overview of the total design. A vehicle was developed with a diesel engine, hydraulic transmission, four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering. The available power and the stability of the vehicle does not limit the freedom of research regarding solutions for intra-row weed detection and weeding actuators. To fulfill the function of navigation along the row a new machine vision algorithm was developed. A test in sugar beet in a greenhouse showed that the algorithm was able to find the crop row with an average error of less than 25 mm. The vehicle is a versatile design for an autonomous weeding robot in a research context. The result of the design has good potential for autonomous weeding in the near future.