Intelligent Bugs Mapping and Wiping (iBMW): An Affordable Robot-Driven Robot for Farmers

Navel orangeworm (NOW) is a common pest of almonds in California. According to research results, California almond harvests is worth of more than five billion dollars before processing. The NOW can cause about 30 percent product loss in almonds from direct consumption. For those who had 20 percent total damage, the loss can be as high as $1742.50 per acre, which is 24 percent of the total profit $7200 per acre. Therefore, NOW is economically and ecologically important in California. Each year in California, eradication of pests is not always available, due to either the pest's fast expanding distribution or constraints regarding the tools available to attempt eradication. Traditionally, people use pheromone traps to monitor the flights of NOW, but it needs labors counting the number of moths at least once a week and to track the data, which is time consuming and needs a lot of labor effort. In this paper, it proposed an intelligent bugs mapping and wiping (iBMW) robot concept to perform pest population spatial and temporal distribution and surgical precision spraying for pest wipeout. The iBMW is an affordable (less than $1000) robot-driven robot, which has a Turtlebot 3 worked as the robot's brain and an unmanned ground vehicle serviced as the work platform. According to the design, the robot will be capable to recognize and classify the NOW by using deep learning neural networks. And, several iBMWs can also work in the field together in swarming mode day and night, so that it can realize temporal and spatial bugs mapping. Then, based on the mapping results, the iBMWs can determine which areas are at the greatest risk and whether wiping treatment is needed in those areas.