Robot Design for Monitoring Soil Quality for Crops Vegetables

Agriculture is crucial to the development and survival of societies, as it provides food, income and strengthens the economy. Crop production depends on soil nutrients; soil nutrient shortages reduce yields. However, excessive use of chemical fertilizers can pollute water, degrade soil, and harm plant health. This paper presents a proposed design of an autonomous robot that uses electrochemical sensors to measure the concentration of nutrients in the soil. The system incorporates a Raspberry Pi 4 controller and a camera to process reconnaissance data and plot trajectory lines for autonomous navigation. To achieve this goal, a combination of VDI 2206 and MIT design methodology has been proposed to efficiently address the challenges of developing such systems. The first phases of the project involve the specification, generation and selection of concepts for the design. Next, the selected concepts are validated and, finally, the final specifications of the mechanical, electrical and computer design are made. The results obtained reveal that a torque of 1,569 N-m is required to start the operation of the robot. By selecting a suitable geared motor, a linear speed of 0.683 m/s is achieved. Moreover, with a 16,600 mAh capacity battery, the robot is able to travel a distance of up to 3,788 km and the proposed PID control is much more optimal. In addition, the training of the model in YOLOv5 achieved an accuracy of 85%. Finally, the Inventor software design and correlation of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium levels in a single crop furrow by taking 33 samples is presented.