Robo Kisan- A Helping Hand to the Farmer

Industrial revolution no doubt is adding a lot to the human life but at the same time it is polluting the atmosphere as well. Agricultural industries are no exception. In order to crack the demand and supply gap, it became essential to minimize the losses on the farm and increase the yield; various control strategies, which include chemical applications, have been developed and are in practice. But the use of these chemicals & pesticides are endangering the environment by polluting the atmosphere. Now this pollution has started giving health hazards which has to be taken urgent care. Hence there is increasing pressure to reduce the use of pesticides in modern crop production to decrease the environmental impact of current practice and to lower the production costs. It is therefore imperative that chemical sprays are only applied when and where needed. Since diseases in field are frequently patchy, chemicals may be avoided from being applied unnecessarily to disease-free areas. Main object of present research is automation of the early detection of grape plant disease and assist the farmer by giving the information regarding targeted application of the required medicine to protect and care their infected plants from diseases. At present the prevalent practice of detection is by human eyes which have its limitations because there are many microscopic disease symptoms beyond visual observations. Due to limited visual nature of the plant monitoring task, computer vision techniques seem to be well adapted. An automated machine/ robot can send the information by voice/computer message or automatically apply the required chemicals at target point. In view of the above the present research was conducted and a robotic farm assistant carrying a SENSOR capable of detecting downy mildew disease and recommending proper chemical dose has been developed. This robot has been developed in two folds: 1. an automatic navigator the “Robo Kisan” equipped with sensors for automatic mobility in the grape field and 2. a sensor for detecting the downy mildew disease. Keywords— disease detection, downy mildew, farm helper,