Design and Development of an Agri-bot for Automatic Seeding and Watering Applications

Agriculture is the backbone of rural India. Farmers face problems such as lack of timely availability of efficient workforce, as many have migrated from country side. Hence, to reduce the burden of farmers, automation in the field of farming is necessary. Automated robots are being developed over the past two decades to assist the agriculture activities like ploughing, sowing, weeding, pesticide spraying and fruit picking all over the world. This paper deals with building up an indigenous low-cost semi-automatic robot prototype that carries out a couple of farming processes. The robot developed in this work is semi-automatic and will be able to sow seeds based on seed spacing and depth while also regulating watering of plants. The applications of this can range from efficient and intensive commercial farming to using it for research and backyard gardening purposes. The developed robot prototype is tested for its functionality and performance in a restricted area. The robot is able to automatically seed and water according the path set by the user using the GUI that was developed. The amount of watering is based on the soil moisture sensor reading that is taken between the two plants The developed robot can be extended further by mounting it on a DC motor chassis which can be used to move the robot in the entire field.