A design and analysis of an autonomous ground vehicle to automate the process of transplanting rice

Abstract

Precision agriculture brought with it the implementation of new digital technologies, mainly autonomous vehicles, satellite images, IoT and artificial intelligence, to provide economic, productive, and environmental benefits in the agricultural field. However, the main applications are focused on data management and monitoring of crop fields, so agricultural processes such as planting and harvesting are not yet fully automated. A clear example of this occurs in the cultivation of rice, which despite being one of the most important agricultural products in the world, the manual production method continues to predominate in developing countries. This work presents a design of an autonomous terrestrial vehicle capable of carrying out the rice transplantation process, having as its main characteristics its ability to move in the field of cultivation at a speed of 0.75m/s, transport a payload of up to 20kg and possess an autonomy of 1 hour. Which translates into an effective field capacity (EFC) of 0.21 ha/h, an operational equivalence of 7 workers/hour and an increase in the productivity of the transplant process of 200% with respect to the manual process. It seeks to provide farmers in developing countries with an affordable option, supported by numerical simulations, with which they can obtain the benefits of precision agriculture in the process of transplanting rice. In such a way, that the manual production of rice and its disadvantages such as low productivity, the physical consequences for the farmers and the limitations against expensive machinery are replaced by the automation proposal.