The AGROBOT project.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the AGROBOT project. This project was initiated to develop a complete robotic system for the production cycle of tomato plants in a greenhouse environment. The robot architecture is based on a vehicle carrying the picking arm (a six degrees of freedom anthropomorphic arm with a gripper/hand), the head with the two micro cameras (for the color stereoscopic vision system) and the VME rack for the complete control of the system. The head was purposely developed to permit complete visibility of the overall area. The vision system drives the head to point the path during navigation or to explore the plants looking for the work objects. The robot will be able to navigate between rows of plants, stop near each plant and identify the relevant objects (fruits or flowers) so as to be able to pick ripe tomatoes or spray anticryptogamic substances on flowers. Due to its flexible architecture, the system can be suited to operate on other kinds of cultivation or could be modified to perform other kinds of operations such as transplanting or packaging. Also the field of action could be different from greenhouses: changing from a wheeled locomotion system to a tracked system, the robot will be able to operate on particularly irregular surfaces. These features make this robotic system particularly adapted to replace human from tiring and harmful tasks or operating within adverse environment.