‘Agbot’ Ground Robot That Can Take Pictures and Spray in the Peach Orchard.

Plants cannot walk to their doctors/plant researchers to convey their health condition like we do. Although we are living in the era of precision agriculture, it is difficult to obtain close-up individual plant level information using unmanned air vehicle. To study peach tree short life syndrome that causes sudden death of peach trees in the orchard, we have developed a methodology to monitor the progression of the short life syndrome. To find out the sequential changes in peach tree before the death, we wanted to take regular picture of morphological changes of each tree. To take pictures manually for thousands of trees of an orchard from the same location was not only difficult but also an impossible task. There was no automated ground vehicle that can take high resolution pictures of an orchard plants from the same place regularly. Therefore, we have developed this robot and named as ‘Agbot’ (Height: 25” X Width: 30” X Length: 55”, having 6 wheels, and 4” clear from ground). This newly developed ‘ground robot’ can takes high resolution pictures from exactly same position every time. The ‘agbot’ uses 4 cameras (Logitech C922x Pro Stream Webcam) to take pictures automatically and save in the file like 5_8_2017_9873482/row_1_tree_1_camer_1.jpg for each tree, as many times as we want per week. This ‘agbot’ is a battery (12 volts) operated and it runs for 5-6 hours once it is fully charged. Four pictures are taken for each tree (upper and lower for each side). These sequentially arranged pictures can be used by plant researchers/pathologists/experts/farmers to monitor the health condition of each tree due to biotic or abiotic stresses. Besides taking pictures this ‘agbot’ can be fitted to spray in the orchard for controlling weeds and pests as required.