For a plant, if it cannot access the necessary nutrients, its overall growth will be limited, significantly reducing the farmer's economic profitability. Farmers use various strategies to increase nutrient availability for a growing crop, particularly the addition of chemical fertilizers such as nitrogen and phosphorus.
Professor Liangxiu Han of Manchester Metropolitan University and her team are working to establish the innovative "N2 Vision" nitrogen mapping system, which allows farmers to apply fertilizers exactly where they're needed to maximize yields and protect the environment.
Together with Auto Spray Systems, a European supplier of automatic spraying systems for agriculture, and GMV Group, Liangxiu's team built an advanced soil composition detection and mapping robot using nitrogen and soil sampling technology, which could revolutionize the way farmers work in the near future.
BBC Science Correspondent Richard Westcott spent the day exploring how autonomous robots can help UK farmers reduce their carbon and nitrogen footprint by working smarter. Don't miss the BBC video showcasing the N2 robotic platform.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIOWOZ23Tjs
Combined with the robotic arm structure, the N2 robot's advanced soil sampling, analysis, and mapping system is mounted on AgileX Robotics' Scout Mini, a lightweight all-terrain mobile chassis platform. The team has adapted the Scout Mini's motion model to omnidirectional mode, making it lighter, more flexible, and more energy-efficient to meet the needs of agricultural applications.
The N2 robot can navigate autonomously and flexibly on the farm, navigating between crop rows on uneven terrain. It then implants its arm sensing system in the soil to perform sampling, detection, and mapping, as well as to precisely position and assess the soil's nutrient content and type.
With the N2 Vision nitrogen mapping robot, farmers improve efficiency and increase their profit margins, while reducing chemical use, lowering carbon emissions, and improving worker safety. The robust N2 robotic platform allows for rapid field scanning regardless of weather conditions.
AgileX Robotics' Scout Mini UGV is the ultimate lightweight, versatile mobile research platform designed for cutting-edge scientific research. SCOUT MINI supports access to multi-level autonomous operating systems via the CAN bus protocol and can integrate sensor systems, such as monitoring and inspection systems, to expand research and development into more AI agricultural applications, such as monitoring soil temperature, moisture, root depth and health, and pest control.
About the Liangxiu Han Robotics Team at Manchester Metropolitan University
Liangxiu Han is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing, Mathematics and Digital Technology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Professor Han is Co-Director of the Centre for Advanced Computational Science and the Centre for Big Data on Crime and Wellbeing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
About AgileX Robotics
AgileX Robotics is committed to helping enterprises, researchers, and educational institutions rapidly deploy and develop cutting-edge intelligent robotics research platforms to improve productivity across industries. AgileX Robotics offers a full line of UGV chassis that can tackle off-road environments such as indoor factories, urban roads, dirt roads, off-road terrain, rivers, and drainage canals. They also facilitate the development of autonomous systems such as on-vehicle navigation and mapping systems. AgileX Robotics also provides a Gazebo model and supports ROS packages for development and real-world verification by researchers in industry and education.
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