FARMBOT SMALLSCALE, LOW COST FARMING AUTOMATION SYSTEM

Transcription

1 FARMBOT SMALLSCALE, LOW COST FARMING AUTOMATION SYSTEM COLLEGE BRANCH PROJECT REFERENCE NO.: 39S_BE_1871 : ACHARYA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BENGALURU : DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING : PROF. JAYALAXMI H GUIDE STUDENTS : MR. CHETHAN M MR. AMARESH G MR. ANUDEEP C MR. KRISHNA KEYWORDS: Farming, Bluetooth, Automation, Mobile, Microcontroller, Android, Modular INTRODUCTION: Agricultural automation using Farmbot is an attempt to reduce the burden of maintaining a farm for small scale and large scale alike by automating the most commonly performed tasks such as sowing of seeds, watering of plants and finally even removing weeds or collecting root vegetables. In addition to all of the above the architecture of Farmbot is modular i.e. there is a pick and place arm which is free to move in circular and vertical direction, mounting this arm on a moving platform gives this system freedom of movement along 3-axis. Automation is the technique, method or system of operating or controlling a process by highly automatic means, as by electronics devices, reducing human intervention to a minimum. Modular architecture refers to the design of any system composed of separate components that can be connected together. The beauty of modular architecture is that you can replace or add any one component (module) without affecting the rest of the system. The area of digital electronics and intelligent systems, automation using robot has become one of the fastest developing application-based technologies in the world. The incorporation of the mobile communication technologies into the automation systems, now allows the users to use mobile application on their phone to control their farms (taken as example) from distance. OBJECTIVES: The main objective of the system is to design and implement a scale model of a cheap and open source agriculture automation system that conforms to principles of Autonomous Robot Architectures (AuRa) mainly concentrating on modular structure, centralized control. This system also proves as a base on which much more complex systems might be designed. The system uses Bluetooth for communication in this model for debugging purposes but in real-time implementation this can be replaced by mobile GSM networks that require no special modification on network infrastructure, or even no need for network infrastructure at all. Here, Android mobile phone which acts as the server that bridges user and the appliances the user wishes to control. This suitable for personal farming but in case of large scale this can be easily replaced by a program for windows giving much more data processing

2 capabilities to the organization for further research and development. The Android application is to be written in Java and the Android Development Kit SDK can be used to rapid prototype a basic GUI that provides a convenient user interface to control the system. METHODOLOGY: The Figure 1 shows the general idea that will be used to solve the problem of automated farming. The tracks allow the motion of the gantry along the x-axis, the gantry allows the motion of the cross-slide along the y-axis and finally the universal tool mount allows for using different tools/farming modules and also facilitates the motion of the tools along the z-axis to suit to the required height of the plants. The universal tool mount interfaces the cross-slide with various tools such as waterdistribution module, seed-injection module and plant-removal module. This universal mount also allows for newer modules to be interfaced to it, thus making such an implementation future-proof and gives more power to the user as he can use only the modules that is actually required by him. The working is simple and the plants are planted in straight lines along the tracks at regular pre-defined spaces by using the seed-injection module and the water-distribution module waters the plants regularly and finally the plant-removal module is used to remove the plant after the stipulated period of time to obtain the required vegetable. Figure 1: Schematic diagram Drawbacks with the above design: 1. It is not cost efficient to put tracks for the entire farm 2. Each and every farm needs a custom made design, adding to the engineering costs. 3. No land is flat in nature, hence leading to mechanical failure. To overcome the above drawbacks, the design is slightly modified as shown below in Figure 2.

3 Figure 2: Working diagram Here a robotic pick and place arm is used instead of gantry and cross-slide there by eliminating the need for tracks as well as motor failure issues arising from the design. The advantage of pick and place design is that it can be mounted on to a moving platform giving us all the 3 degrees of freedom similar to the previous design. Here the pick and place arm acts as a universal tool mount where the different tools are mounted by picking them, using them and placing them respectively. By placing them in predefined places we can automate the entire pick and place operation since the pick any module and the robot can be upgraded by replacing the module and a simple software upgrade. The block diagram of the Farmbot system is as shown in the Figure 3-5 shows the flow charts for the software part of the Embedded System as well as the Android application. Figure 3: Block diagram of Farmbot and its Android phone remote

4 Figure 4: Robot control application Flowchart Figure 5: Embedded System program Flowchart RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Implementation of the wireless control is done with the help of the Bluetooth HC-05 module. Controlling of the various modules (motors) are done by receiving the commands over the Bluetooth from Android mobile application. Once the commands are received, the microcontroller sends a digital signal to the respective port pins in the microcontroller, these are in turn connected to the enable pins of L293 Motor driver boards, which drive the respective motors. The figure 7 shows the Farmbot with all the different components labelled. The robot designed in this project is connected to the user mobile phone over Bluetooth link therefore it is limited to the Bluetooth range, this can be extended with the help of a GSM module in the place of a Bluetooth receiver. When the application is first launched, the user is greeted with a login screen that can be unlocked by entering the username and password. The application also displays required notifications to display the current command being transmitted to the Microcontroller via Bluetooth.

5 Figure 7: Labelled diagram of the Farmbot The agriculture automation system has been designed and realized using a simple model controlled over the Bluetooth signal from Android Mobile Phone. The designed system is a low cost demonstration model, which is able to convey the application and future scope for modular automated agriculture systems. This demonstration system was made at a low cost and was tested successfully to grow small crops. FUTURE WORK: There is still much future scope for improving and upgrading the machine. 1. Multi-robot automated farming is yet to be implemented. 2. The passive modules need to be replaced by active modules and this can only happen when power supply interface is designed from the place robotic interface. 3. Sensors have to be implemented to make the system more accurate. 4. The data obtained from the first generation systems have to undergo Machine Learning to create truly intelligent systems and make them more efficient. 5. Newer modules must be designed that makes the system suitable for variety of farms. 6. Open-source frame work has to be written and successfully standardized to lead to wide scale adoption of such modular systems. 7. Need an increase in technical know-how to operate the system.