Modified Design of a Precision Planter For a Robotic Assistant Farmer

Chapter 1- Introduction 
1-1-Robotic farming 
Agriculture and farming is considered one of the most exhaustive works which requires a 
lot of effort to perform seeding, planting, weeding, spraying and harvesting. 
Robotics technology has helped us to improve the quality of our lives in different aspects. 
But still implementation of robots in the field of agriculture, especially farm activities, is a 
challenge for scientists and engineers. Robots can help us plant accurately, water accurately and 
also control weeds and pests more accurately. These all mean, higher quality products, cheaper 
food and less labor.
This research is part of a larger project, named "Developing robotics assisted technology 
for farming". In the overall project, a new robotic technology will be developed to help farmers 
in weed control and planting for certain types of crops. This research can be broken down into a 
few sub-projects: 1) Navigation of wheeled robot in a semi-structured farm setting, 2) Designing 
tools (robotic arms) for robotic assisted farming (weeding, seeding, and planting); this goal 
includes design and construction of ground engagement tools, and 3) Implementation of robotic 
assisted farming (i.e. navigation when the robot arm is engaged with the ground). The 
contribution of this project in the overall project is to design a seeding mechanism, with optimum 
manner which will result in minimum required force from the mobile robot while it performs 
seeding with accuracy. 
The mobile robot that is being used for this research is an 850-kg autonomous guided 
vehicle (AGV) named Grizzly (Figure 1-1). Its dimensions are 1.8x1.3 m and its height is 1.0 m. 

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It can go as fast as 4.4 m/s and in its high performance condition, it can pull up to 7500 N on its 
drawbar. 
Figure1- 1- Grizzly mobile robot uses Laser scanner, GPS, IMU and other sensors for 
navigation and control. 
Equipment installed on the mobile robot for navigation and position control are DGPS 
(Differential Global Positioning System), central IMU (Inertia Measurement Unit) and a tilting 
laser scanner unit. Navigation of the robot is controlled by DGPS. With the differential 
correction signal receiving from the base GPS via radio, its positioning will be as accurate as 20 
mm. The central IMU gives the orientation of the mobile robot. The laser scanner unit with its 
180º view and also its tilt unit can cover the whole area in front of the robot, to detect any 
obstacle in front of the robot.