Robot arm and control architecture integration on a UGV for precision agriculture

The aim of this work is to present a novel UGV equipped with a collaborative robot arm developed for the agricultural sector. The UGV, named Agri.q02, has eight degrees of freedom that permit to work in unstructured environments. The rover is provided with a landing platform for UAVs and a positioning mechanism is able to keep the platform horizontal above the soil. The robotic system is powered by a 12 V battery and is equipped with solar panels, located on the landing platform. To collect samples for crops monitoring purposes and to cooperate with the drone on the platform, a robot arm will be mounted on the UGV. The manipulator will be placed on the rover with a mechanism that permits to enlarge the workspace of the end effector and to overspread a wide portion of the platform. The solution adopted will be described in detail. Indexes will be given to evaluate performance in terms of actual workspace. Finally, the mechatronic system architecture and the operative modalities of the robotic system will be presented.