| الوصف: |
The main target of this research activity is to develop an autonomous electrical vehicle able to spray agricultural chemicals inside greenhouses. This vehicle can increase operations safety level for operators and quality of the chemicals distribution, allowing lower environmental pollution and better greenhouse product quality. As future development, also the vehicle's chemicals tank refuelling operations will be remotely operated, because this step is one with the highest risk for the operators due to possible contact of the operators with huge quantity of chemicals. During a first step, the activity will be focused on the development of the electrical vehicle with remote control wireless capabilities. After the vehicle will be fully tested, a distribution and refuelling unit with sensors will be developed and optimised for the specific application. Feasibility tests have been done using an outdoor remotely operated rover available at DIEES Robotic Laboratory; these tests have demonstrated the goodness of the idea. Moreover, due to constant reduction of electronic parts cost, like computer and power control system and to the presence on the market of new low cost devices for precision farming, the development of a dedicated autonomous vehicle is not as expensive as in the past. Key words Robot, tomatoes, safety, precision farming State of the art Leaving out direct costs, agricultural chemicals distribution has huge impact on social cost due to the high risk level for operators and to possible environmental pollutions. To mitigate these problems, in recent past, some semi-automatic distribution methodologies, based on some fixed facilities build inside each greenhouse, have been developed. These can operate without human intervention inside the greenhouse and are composed by a number of sliding rods with nozzles. Due to their high cost and huge impact on the greenhouse, they are not so common. Because of greenhouses are highly structured and regular environment with respect to the open field, they are ... |
