2020 International Conference on Innovative Trends in Information Technology (ICITIIT)

Solar Powered Automated Multi-Tasking

Agricultural Robot
Jerosheja B R Dr. Mythili C
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
University College of Engineering, Nagercoil. University College of Engineering, Nagercoil.
[email protected] [email protected]

ABSTRACT - More than 40 percent of the men power and in lower yields per capita labour force. So,
population in the world chooses agriculture as the primary we must mechanise the agricultural operations so that
occupation. The main objective of the project is to design a wastage of labour force is avoided, and farming is made
multitasking vehicle for agriculture which could run convenient and efficient. We believe some progress will be
automatically. It is designed to minimize the labor of farmers made by applying this vehicle in agricultural field.
in addition to increase the speed and accuracy of the work.
The control and monitoring are based on internet of things,
Current agricultural practices in India are neither
due to which the actual status of the field can be monitored economically nor sustainable and India’s yield for many
and controlled from any part of world using internet. In our agricultural commodities are low. The main factors are
project we have two control systems i.e. field control and robot poorly maintained irrigation systems and almost universal
control. In field control the soil moisture, temperature and lack of good extension services. So, this project is also
humidity is sensed using suitable sensors and the field is meant for control the irrigation activities. Through this
controlled by suitable actions as well as the information is design the required water supply is automatically monitored
updated to the farmer by an app. The theft of crops by and used whenever needed. Some farmers are unaware of
humans and the attack of animals in the agricultural land the technological developments in farming. Increase the
cause heavy loss in cultivation. For intruder detection in the yields which not only alleviated the level of hunger, but
agricultural field we can use PIR sensor and do image simultaneously released the human population from the
processing technique to detect them. Usually, fires occur nutritional obstacle to further growth. So continued growth
naturally in agricultural fields, ignited by heat from the sun or demands even more agricultural improvements. So, we
a lightning strike. So, we design a system in the field to must find whatever ways to improve the agriculture and
extinguish such fire at very early stage. The robot control has make our country a better place to live. India is an
a camera to provide a live vision of the field so while it agricultural country.
performs its basic operations, we can monitor everything. The
whole system can be switched to automated mode for complete Nearly seventy percent of our population depends
control of the farm by the robot and manual mode for control on agriculture. Agriculture yields one-third of our National
by farmer. The robot sprays pesticides and weedicides to income. Our economy is based on agriculture. The
control attack of pest and weeds in the field. Also, the battery development of agriculture has a great impact on the
can be recharged by the solar panel kept above the vehicle. economic welfare of our country. Our agriculture was in
This ensures the using eco-friendly energy source and underdeveloped condition for a long time. We didn't
prevents frequent charging of the vehicle. produce enough food for our people. Our country had to
buy vegetables and grains from foreign countries, but the
Index Terms—Automation, control systems, PIR sensor, solar
panel, microcontrollers.
things are changing now. India is producing more food-
grains than its needs. Some food-grains are being sent to
I. INTRODUCTION other countries. Great improvements have been made in.
agriculture through our five-year plans. Green Revolution
The primary occupation in a developing country has been brought in the agricultural sector. Now our
like India is agriculture. But nowadays the number of country is self-sufficient in food-grains. It is now able to
people involved in agricultural sector is declining due to export surplus food-grains and some other agricultural
various reasons. It is essential to improve the efficiency and products to other countries. Our country ranks first in the
productivity of agriculture. By using this project, we can world in the production of tea and groundnuts. It ranks
perform various tasks for agricultural purposes. Despite second in the world in the production of rice, sugarcane,
large-scale mechanization in agricultural field in some parts jute and oil seeds.
of the country, most of the agricultural operations in large
number of parts are carried on by humans by using simple Before independence our agriculture depended on
tools and implements like wooden plough, sickle, etc. Little rains. As a result, our productivity from agriculture was
or no use of machines is made in ploughing, sowing, very small. In case the seasons were good, we got a good
irrigating, weeding the crops. This is specially the case with harvest and in case the seasons were not good, the crops
small and marginal farmers. It results in huge wastage of failed and there was famine in some parts of the country.

978-1-7281-4210-4/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE

After the independence the Government made plans for the which controls the overall action of the system.
development of agriculture. In the past irrigation facilities The autonomous movement of the robot is based on the
were not enough. Farmers depended mainly on rainwater sign boards on the field, which guides the robot in required
for irrigation. Canals and tube-wells were very few. Water direction. Also, the movement can be controlled by the app
is stored in rivers, lakes and reservoirs for generating in manual mode. The camera in the robot acts as the eye of
electricity for our industries and agriculture. Water from the the field and is used in monitoring and controlling the field.
dams is being taken to distant lands for irrigation. Tube- The bot sprays pesticides and weedicides to control the pest
wells and pumping sets have been given to farmers. Now and weeds automatically. This is done with the help of
more land is used for irrigation and better crops are digital image processing with the help of tensor flow and
produced.
opencv.
During the work farmers must suffer many The Robot also measures temperature and humidity of the
problems. At the time of spraying pesticide liquids, they farm which is used to monitor the field. The field control
must face some breathing diseases. Chemicals used in the uses PIR sensor (Passive Infrared sensor) to detect the
pesticide liquids are harmful and dangerous for mankind, if motion around the field. But for theft or intruder detection a
they don’t pay attention during spraying, they have to suffer more reliable setup is needed in order to recognise the
problems. Time consumed for spraying the liquids in the intruder in the field. For this the image is captures and
field is more. analysed to detect and recognise the intruder as well as to
alert the farmer. This also ensures that the system does not
II. RELATED WORK alert when the farmer itself or another authorised person
comes to the field.
1. Intelligent Gateway and Smart Agriculture:
Xiao Chang[5] used a new method called intelligent gateway i. Motion Control
for sensor data monitoring, video monitoring, device For the motion control purpose, four DC gear motors
control etc. Multi-protocol data transmission is done (12V) can be used. The dc motors can be connected to the
through zigbee, wifi, Bluetooth. The data are stored in a motor driver circuit. The motor driver converts the low
cloud which provides real-time data query through input signal into high input signal. The dc gear motor is
Application Programming Interface (API). Big data used to generate high torque. The motor driver is controlled
analysis, machine learning is adopted in order to analyze by the raspberry pi which in turn drives the motors. The
and predict many agricultural product price data. locomotion can do autonomously using image processing
Muhammad Ayaz adapted smart agriculture method which algorithms; also can be controlled by manual operation in
would do soil sampling through a soil testing kit called app.
Lab-in-a-box which can analyze 100 samples per day ii. Seed sower
without having any lab experience. Crop Water Stress
Index (CWSI)-based irrigation system is used to increase In this section we design and fabricate a fully automated
the crop efficiency. Yield monitoring, forecasting and seed sower which operates when the user switch ON the
harvesting using IOT has revolutionized farming methods seed sower button in the app.It has a funnel shaped seed
to a great extent. IOT sensors in field is used to detect collector which guides the seeds to a wheel arrangement.
The motor is connected to the shaft which contains small
temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, soil electrical
bracket for pouring seedsin a wheel. When the switch is on,
conductivity, soil moisture content and soil salinity. the seed sower starts implanting seeds into the ground. This
2. Multipurpose Robot: ensures uniform implanting of seeds in the field

Durga Sowjanya et at [6] designed a multipurpose robot iii. Harvester

which would do the functions like mud closing and It’s a setup in which a rotating blade cuts the crop as the
levelling, automatic irrigation, ploughing and seed sowing bot moves. The blade is run by the high-speed motor which
etc. Hector Ivan Tangarife proposed a new idea of using a ensures smooth cutting of the crop. This setup is suitable
stationary robot platform to complement activities like for commercial crops likes paddy and wheat.
image analysis. Neha Naik did multitask such as irrigation,
iv. Monitoring
seeding, ploughing, and fertilizer spraying etc through
camera and machine vision. The navigation of the robot is It has a camera which will give a live vision of the field
done based on GPS, Wi-Fi and remote-controlled system. so while it performs its basic operations, we can monitor
everything in and around the field. It acts as an eye to
III. METHODOLOGY access from IoT device. Other sensors like moisture sensor,
temperature and humidity sensor, PIR sensor and fire
1. Multitasking Vehicle System sensors are also used for monitoring and controlling the
The multi-tasking vehicle system is also known as the field.
robot control in this paper. The robot is controlled by
v. Pesticide Spraying
raspberry pi 3 model B, which has 1.2GHz 64-bit quad core
processor. Raspberry pi act as the brain of the system,
 A container is used for storing pesticides or weedicides. vi. Irrigation
A pump is used for pumping and spraying the
pesticides/weedicides. The irrigation is carried out by means of soil moisture
sensor and water pump. The soil moisture sensor is used for

Figure 1:block diagram for multi-tasking robot

A. FIELD CONTROLLING SYSTEM measuring the volumetric water content in soil. The pump
switches ON and OFF in accordance to the moisture level
In field control system there is a control setup installed available in the soil. Both these components are connected
permanently on the field. In this setup there are 3 sensors to the NodeMCU. The NodeMCU communicates with the
i.e. PIR sensor, soil moisture sensor and fire sensor. database (Google Firebase) for IOT in app.
vii. Intrusion Detection
The entry of animals or thief will affect the crops and
productivity drastically. So, we use PIR sensor to detect the
entry of animals or any person. But PIR works on the
principle of motion detection and sends only digital data as
output i.e. 0s and 1s. this is insufficient to recognise the
intruder. So at the time of detection the camera in the
raspberry pi is switched on and the image is processed to
recognise the intrusion. If an unauthorised image is
detected, then a notification is sent to the farmer through
app to protect his field.
viii. Fire Extinguisher
Figure 2: Block diagram of field system
 To extinguish the fire, a flame sensor is used in which it It can provide live soil moisture, humidity and temperature
will detect the fire and extinguish the fire in a short span of of the field to the farmers. The attack of animals in the
time. The flame sensor and the suction motor are interfaced agricultural land can be identified by means of PIR sensor.
with the NodeMCU.
The vehicle performs basic functions like seeding,
IV. IMPLEMENTATION pesticides spraying, harvesting etc. It can extinguish the fire
at early stages. The field monitoring can be done by the
This project can be implemented in paddy, wheat and other help of camera in the vehicle. The pesticide sprayer is used
fields. It can provide complete control and monitoring of in the vehicle which would prevent the humans from being
the field connected. The farmer can control the field from infected of those pesticides. We can control it from
home or any part of the world using internet. anywhere in the world using internet of things. We can
monitor the field from our home itself. From this we can
The field execution block (fig: 5) depicts the execution of get info about the field from anywhere. It will be very cost
the field control technique. The NodeMCU is the ESP8266
effective for the farmers and it will help towards their

Figure 3: field execution block

module which controls the field setup. In the field there are
three sensors i.e. PIR sensor, soil moisture sensor and fire
sensor. The information of field setup is sent to the cloud
and stored in a online database i.e. Google Firebase which
is a real time database. The values stored in the database
can be used by the app as well as by the robot (raspberry pi)
for further manipulations.

V. RESULT
A. IoT Interface:
An APP is made which is used to control and monitor all
the activities from any part of the world with the help of
internet. This IOT interface can be used to view the statues
of the field, sensor data, display the live video of the field
by just switching ON the button, control them and do many
other cool things.

The interfacing of the data from micro-controllers and

microprocessors and the app is done using Google Firebase,
an online database which stores the status of the system.

B. Multitasking Vehicle:
• Manual mode Figure 4: APP output screen
wealth and improvement in the agriculture. [5] Aishwarya.B.V ; Archana.G ; C. Umayal “Agriculture robotic
vehicle-based pesticide sprayer with efficiency optimization” 17
December 2015. Vol 12. pp 324-329.
[6] Sarita Gupta ; Ajay Mudgil ; Prashant Bhardwaj ; Mahendra
Gupta “Design and Development of Automatic Fire Alert
System” 26 October 2017.
[7] Ram Krishna Jha ; Santosh Kumar ; Kireet Joshi ; Rajneesh
Pandey “Field monitoring using IOT in agriculture” IEEE 23
April 2018. pp 1417-1420.
[8] Yunseop Kim; Robert G. Evans ; William M. Iversen “Remote
Sensing and Control of an Irrigation System” IEEE
Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.-July 2008
Vol 57. pp 7-11.

Figure 5: multi-tasking robot

• Autonomous mode

The soil moisture and temperature are sensed, and the

vehicle takes the necessary decision for irrigation.

The multitasking vehicle is coded on the basics of digital

image processing for its autonomous movement, working
and security of the field. We use opencv functions to
manipulate the control and monitoring of the field
autonomously. The iterative processes like irrigations and
monitoring for intrusion of animals can be programmed
continuously, whereas harvesting, seeding, spraying
pesticides or weedicides can be done on request of farmer
(manual mode). The fire safety alarm and extinguishing can
be made automatic. Even in automated mode we can
monitor as well as control the vehicle through IoT.

VI. CONCLUSION

Hence, we have developed an autonomous robot and field

control system which is used for overall functioning of the
farm with least use of manpower. Nowadays, the people
involved in agricultural sector are decreased because of the
influence of the modernisation and intervention of IT
sector. This work makes to manger the farm in a modern
way. The use of IOT in agricultural field enhances the
advantage of this work. Also, this is more eco-friendly tool
as it is run by solar power.

VII. REFERENCE
[1] Shubo Liu, Liqing Guo, Heather Webb, Xiao Ya1, And Xiao Chang
“Internet of Things Monitoring System of ModernEco-Agriculture
Based on Cloud Computing” IEEE transaction on IoT Monitoring
System of Modern Eco-Agriculture Based on Cloud Computing-
April 2019
[2] K Durga Sowjanya1, R Sindhu1, M Parijatham1, K Srikanth1, P
Bhargav “Multipurpose Autonomous Agricultural Robot“
International Conference on Electronics, Communication and
Aerospace Technology ICECA 2017
[3] Fernando Alfredo AuatCheein ; Ricardo Carelli “Agricultural
Robotics:Unmanned Robotic Service Units in Agricultural Tasks”
IEEE Sept. 2013. Vol 7. pp 48-58.
[4] Sanku Kumar Roy ; Arijit Roy ; Sudip Misra ; Raghuwanshi ;
Mohammad S. Obaidat “AID: A prototype for Agricultural Intrusion
Detection usingWireless Sensor Network” IEEE :10 September
2015. Vol 32. pp 703-714.