St. Petersburg State University: Robot agro-scout

History

2023: Making a Robot

On October 24, 2023, St. Petersburg University (St. Petersburg State University) announced the creation of the first agricultural scout robot in Russia to monitor the condition of grain and potato crops. According to scientists, their development is universal.

According to the press service of St. Petersburg State University, other agricultural robots by October 2023 solve one specific task: for example, combating weeds, tracking the proportion of diseased plants or harvesting apples. And the version of the robot created by scientists at St. Petersburg State University is the most universal, since it solves several important tasks at once: collecting data on the dynamics of soil composition, analyzing the incidence of plants, analyzing the general state of the entire field.

Prototype robot agro-scout

In the future, scientists of St. Petersburg State University plan to create a robot that can travel in real time along a given route, receive data on the necessary areas of grain or potatoes with high-precision geographical reference (using optical sensors and soil sensors), transmit them to the GIS system, where data will be analyzed for diseases, weeds, the current state of plants, etc. In the future, the system can be scaled up to agricultural machinery, because it can be equipped with the same analytical systems and sensors, for example, a tractor, noted in the university.

They also added that the main problem when creating field robots is software development, since it is necessary to take into account additional requirements and restrictions on the architecture of the robot and the development of all its systems responsible for movement and orientation in space, as well as data collection with high-precision geospatial binding. In addition, the main problem of such research is the adaptation of the project to a certain plant culture and climatic conditions. By October 2023, there are no projects in Russia that would automate the collection of wheat, barley and oats, and this despite the fact that Russia occupies a leading position in exporting these products, St. Petersburg State University added.^[1]

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