Stabilized mast system for ground autonomous mobile robot in cornfield

• Grant number: 18/04287-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Effective date (Start): July 28, 2018
• Effective date (End): January 27, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Agricultural Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Becker
• Grantee: Mateus Valverde Gasparino
• Supervisor: Girish Chowdhary
• Host Institution: Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos (EESC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Research place: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 17/10401-3 - Automatically balanced structure for minimally invasive monitoring rover, BP.MS

Abstract

This research project will be developed in Distributed Autonomous Systems Laboratory (DASLab) in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as part of a partnership between Mobile Robotics Laboratory (LabRoM) and DASLab. The main goal of this research is to design, develop and test automatic systems for balancing sensors for precision agriculture. In this context, this project aims to develop a dynamically balanced structure for application in the agricultural environment, capable of self-balancing on a robotic platform. This project allows the access of the analysis tool to a sufficient height to inspect the leaves of a corn plantation, which can reach more than 2 meters in height. Besides, an increased height can benefits equipments like GPS that have their operation highlighted due to its greater exposure to radio waves. This new self-balanced robotic platform concept makes it possible to achieve a higher operating height without having to increase the base area of the robotic platform. Therefore, such system reduces the intervention in the crop, while overcoming different terrain slopes without tipping of the system. Moreover, the proposed system will also be tested with DASLab robotic platforms, verifying the gain of stability in machine vision systems that are being used there. (AU)