Development of a 3-SPR robot for concentrated-light-based autonomous weeding

Robotics is one of the fastest growing fields in recent decades. It is increasingly common to find robotic systems in our day to day. In the industry, these systems are replacing the traditional methodology and processes used until now, with many processes that have become automated by robots. Most of these tasks now in the hands of machines are repetitive and can become impossible to perform or even dangerous for people. One of the fields in which robotics is making its way is agriculture, in which rudimentary techniques and tools are used for most processes, and there are more and more robots that automate these processes avoiding that they must be carried out by humans. Earth Rover Europe is a company dedicated to robotics applied to precision agriculture. Its mission is to help feed the growing world population by reducing food waste in its growth stage. Using automated systems, Earth Rover robots carry out agricultural activities currently performed by humans in highly inefficient ways. In addition, the company is concerned at all times to carry out these activities in the most ecological way possible in order to reduce the CO2 emissions produced in agricultural processes. The present work is part of one of these robotic agriculture projects: the weeding system. This project is based on the development of a robot capable of automatic weeding through the use of concentrated light. Therefore, the robot to be developed will be able to automatically detect weeds, point them with the concentrated beam of light at the precise focal length, and emit lightpulses of the right power to transmit all the heat energy necessary to kill the weeds. This document presents the fundamentals for the system’s electronics design, the low-level control programming, and ROS integration. Also, some field test results are presented in order todemonstrate the robot behaviour in the real worl