Photo Voltaic Panel Based E-agricultural Robot

Agricultural vehicle guidance for row crops is a skill and labour intensive task for manuvering equipment without overrunning crops. The adoption of new agricultural technologies, such as precision agriculture, makes the maneuvering even more difficult. The shortage and aging work force in agriculture results, in decrease in the skilled machine operators. Therefore, the development of automated or autonomous agricultural equipment is considered to be of commercial significance and societal importance. Agricultural robot is the autonomous agricultural equipment performing various agricultural operations. Automated navigation aims to guide the robot to follow a desired path automatically. It requires a guidance system be able to detect robot posture, create proper steering signal, and steer the robot according to the signal. The posture is the position and orientation of the robot So far batteries and/or capacitors are used as power sources. The battery supplies only a DC voltage used for the control board of a robot; the capacitor supplies AC voltage for the control of the mobility of a robot by electrical servomotors. The battery uses more time than the capacitors to charge and to discharge energy. There are two strategies for recharging batteries and capacitors: solar panels on the robot and power stations The DC battery system, is the main power source for the robot. Normally this system consists of a combination of switched mode DC power converters. Experimental results show the converter efficiency and voltage ripple at rated load. A discussion of lessons learned provide insight into the need for proper component selection and placement, printed circuit board fabrication, and ensuring a proper ground plane Abstract: The objective of our project is to design an agricultural robot which performs ploughing and seeding operation and takes supply from PV panel. A sensor guidance method is presented to guide a robot platform which is designed independently to drive through the crops in a field according to the design. It is mainly comprised of the rear and front cabins, the driving devices with wheels and the frame. The power supply, motor controllers, and other controlled components are placed in the front cabin and IR sensor is fixed in front of it for finding edge location of both sides. The rear cabin can be used for storage boxes to store some materials such as pesticides, insecticides, and fertilizers. The driving devices include DC motors, gear mechanism with sprocket and wheels. To design a robot which is autonomous and self-sufficient requires enough energy to operate. But they have to be made parallel to optimize the robot energetically. In particular, a power supply solution that utilizes solar cells and a microcontroller has been chosen to power and control the robot.