Phenomobile – Agricultural Robot

pheno

Ordered by INRA and built in partnership with Meca 3D, this agricultural robot (Phenomobile) is intended for the study and phenotyping* of INRA’s crops. This autonomous robot is needed in order to characterize precisely and not ambiguously, the micro-plots of land in an INRA’s experimental platform.

The robot is equipped with a telescopic arm carrying the measuring head. The latter integrates a mechanical platform equipped with the sensors connected to the measurement system. The sensors are:

pheno
The phenomobile, with arm deployed

The robot is autonomous. The Phenomobile movement is controlled by a computer which manages the desired speed and direction from the GPS’s position and accelerometer’s data, in order to follow follow a path defined by an operator. The path is generated automatically from crossing points.

In this project we made the mission planning part, we developed the User Interface and  the vehicle control algorithm. We also integrated to the vehicle and the UI, the whole list of sensors.

 

*Phenotyping: The study of all the observable characteristics of an individual, in this case plants.