A Modular Robot System for Agricultural Applications

Agricultural tasks are manifold: Dependent on the crop, the environment and the desired plant maintenance operation, properties, such as modularity, robustness, compactness or user friendly interfaces, are advantageous for the automation using a robotic system. Therefore, several robotic manipulators have been designed and built for the requirements given by the EU-FP7 project CROPS for multiple applications, including selective harvesting and precision spraying of high-value crops such as sweet-peppers, apples or grapes. Its mechanical design and communication structure will be presented in the first part of this paper. Compact integrated drive units including motor, brake, gear and motor drivers support the modular design of the manipulator. Thus, the developed system can be used in different kinematic configurations according to the special needs of each application. The second part addresses the testing and evaluation concepts and tools in view of the challenges of the simultaneous development of the robot system within a large, spatially distributed project like CROPS. A setup for evaluation and validation of developed algorithms and functions in the laboratory as well as tools and concepts for simultaneous development of interfacing subsystems are shown. The manipulator can be controlled by an ROS interface in various operation modes. Hence, robot systems for three applications (sweet-pepper harvesting, apple harvesting, precision spraying) were implemented with full integration of the manipulator prototype.