Detection and accurate treatment of weeds with a fleet of autonomous aerial and ground robots

Trabajo presentado en el XV Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Malherbologia (SEMh), celebrado en Sevilla del 19 al 22 de octubre de 2015.The RHEA project (Robot Fleets for Highly Effective Agriculture and Forestry Management) funded by the 7th EC Framework Programme focused on the design, development and assess of a new generation of automated and robotic systems for both chemical and physical management of pests including weed control. RHEA addressed the crop treatments by a reconfigurable fleet of robots composed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) equipped with advanced perception systems, intelligent implement and enhanced decision-making algorithms. This paper describes important aspects of the RHEA architecture and details the trials conducted at the Experimental Farm La Poveda (Madrid) where over 97% of the weed infested areas in two wheat crops were treated by the described system.El proyecto RHEA (Robot Fleets for Highly Effective Agriculture and Forestry Management) financiado por el 7º Programa Marco de la Comisión EuropeaPeer Reviewe