Precision humidity and temperature measuring in farming using newer ground mobile robots

Precision farming goal is to maximize the productivity of the crops while minimizing the use of resources. Given that the agricultural technique has evolved along the millenniums, the only real option to keep increasing the agricultural productivity requires the use of technol- ogy: currently, many different robots are being used to harvest, plow and identify weeds. This work aims to reduce the environmental invasion the use of these implies, maximizing at the same time the knowledge of the crop status. We propose a new type of environmental-friendly ground mobile robot employed to monitor temperature and humidity in agricul- tural fields Used as a distributed sensor web. It takes measures of these environmental variables in any specific place required. It also allows to determine zones of the crop with bad irrigation or under germination risks and take corrective actions on time, providing better growing con- ditions: adequate germination time, faster growing and better efficiency. We present its architecture and a new external module used to measure the temperature and humidity. Beside, we also present two experiments carried out to validate the spherical robot approach: the results obtained first at a cornfield and the second in small orchard in CAR-UPM-CSIC facilities are exposed and analysed