Autonomous robotic platforms for greenhouses

The goal of this project is to research and develop a fully autonomous robotic crop management system for protected cropping systems that will help the horticulture industry reduce the risk of crop loss and improve productivity by having the right information to make better decisions. A new crop monitoring and automation robot is currently being developed that will help farmers effectively monitor their crops, reduce crop losses which contribute to food waste and improve the quality of produce. This new concept aims to achieve this by having the capability of autonomously navigating within a typical greenhouse environment. This new concept is building on the successful Harvey robotic platform, an agricultural robot prototype that was designed to robotically identify and harvest capsicums. The new platform recognises the potential that robotic platforms can bring to the industry by not only offering harvesting capability but lower hanging fruit such as autonomous crop monitoring through state-of-the-art navigation and vision systems.