SELECTIVE PESTICIDE SPRAYING WITH THE HELP OF AN AUTONOMOUS ROBOT

As the use of pesticides increases over the years, people are becoming more and more aware of their negative effects and health risks they might pose. The use of pesticides could be reduced significantly by applying them with care, only on to the selected areas and in the right quantities. In this paper we represent a small automated self oriented robot, which would not only replace human labour, but also reduce the use of pesticides and the work quicker with higher precision and lower costs. To achieve this goal we equipped the robot with ultrasonic sensors, high resolution digital camera and an onboard computer. We tested the robot to detect simple objects, where several simulation runs proved 100 % success rate for controlled and 93 % for uncontrolled environments.