When the fruit is ripe, a large number of fruit growers will participate in the transportation and packaging of the fruit in the orchard. This is a labor-intensive job. However, in recent years, the rural labor force has shown a trend of aging and high costs, which has led to an increase in transportation costs and a decrease in efficiency to some extent. In order to alleviate the impact of this situation on fruit production, the The Intelligent Agriculture Innovation Team of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has developed an intelligent follow-up delivery robot, called Little Sowing, as shown in Figure 1. The Little Sowing adopts the versatile SCOUT 2.0 robot chassis from Agilex Robotics. The upper part is equipped with functional modules such as LiDAR, remote control ground station, follow-me module, voice recognition and playback system, and so on. Using autonomous driving, obstacle avoidance, stable following, human-machine voice interaction, and other technologies, it drives the robot according to the manually set transportation route and cycles to assist farmers in achieving repeated, rapid, and low-cost transportation operations in the specified region, reducing the transportation burden on farmers and ensuring the efficiency of transportation at the harvesting site.
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Little Sowing Function Description
First, Little Sowing has the functions of automatic driving and obstacle avoidance in the orchard. It is equipped with a remote control ground station, through which it can perform the functions of drawing the transport path, issuing tasks, position management, and recording. After receiving the task, Little Sowing can autonomously perform transport tasks between the rows of the orchard. At the same time, it can also stop loading and unloading and resume operations at any time according to voice instructions. The ground station is simple and convenient to operate, easy to use, and can also be connected to all robots or other IoT devices in the orchard.
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After receiving the task from the ground station, Little Sowing obediently followed the route to complete the task. It drove along the track autonomously, carefully, and steadily until the task was completed.
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Secondly, Little Sowing also has an autonomous tracking feature. This tracking function allows it to follow farmers to deliver agricultural materials, fruits, and vegetables in real time, thereby reducing the farmer's labor intensity. After enabling the tracking function, the tracking module in Little Sowing will monitor the distance and angle of the tag in the farmer's hands in real time and then convert this information into its own motion control information to achieve tracking. The following module is shown in Figure 2.
In addition, Little Sowing also features voice interaction. It can introduce itself, provide voice guidance, provide weather information, and report farm information, all of which support customization. Real-time voice interaction between Little Sowing and the farmer not only improves the robot's practicality and operability, but also makes it enjoyable for farmers to use.
Currently, the team is still designing transportation and loading equipment for Little Sowing, which will be upgraded to a fully functional and useful smart device. It is believed that Little Sowing's gradual application and continuous improvement in the future will create the fastest and most scientific transportation plan to meet farmers' harvesting and transportation requirements for high efficiency, low cost, and convenience.
About SCOUT 2.0
SCOUT 2.0 is based on a new consumer design and is specifically tailored for industrial applications. The body is compact and small, with low power consumption, equipped with a new cooling system and safety protection system, free movement inside and outside, four-wheel drive, differential rotation, abundant power, easy control of complex application environments, standard protocols and CAN bus support rapid secondary development, presenting the optimal mobile platform solution for you.
