Real-time target detection and steerable spray for vegetable crops

This paper presents a system for autonomously delivering a quantum of fluid to individual plants in a vegetable crop field, using a fine spray nozzle attached to a manipulator arm on a mobile robot. This can reduce input cost and environmental impact while increasing productivity for applications such as micro-nutrient provision, thinning and weeding. The Ladybird platform is introduced and a pipeline for targeted spray is presented, including image-based seedling detection, geometry and transformation, camera-arm calibration, inversekinematics and target sequence optimisation. The system differs from existing approaches due to the continuously steerable nozzle, which can precisely reach targets in a larger workspace.