Smart Field Robot for Lime Farming in Bến Lức (Long An): Weed, Pest and Spray Decision Support in Canal-Based Orchards Design and prototyping of the field robot

This project develops an autonomous IoT agricultural robot for small scale lime orchards in Mekong Delta. TThe robot autonomously navigates the orchard while using a camera-based vision system to detect lime leaves affected by diseases, pests, or abnormal growth conditions. ROS 2 and LiDAR-based SLAM are employed for mapping, localization and autonomous navigation to enable the robot to work efficiently in complex orchard environments. The robot uses an ESP32-based control system to manage the DC motors, gearboxes, and encoder feedback for accurate movement and control. 

 In addition to leaf inspection, an external 4-in-1 soil sensor system measures separately soil moisture, temperature, pH and electrical conductivity (salinity). This is a separate system from the robot and it gives more information about the soil which could explain variations in plant health. Data collected are sent through LoRa communication. LoRa communication allows long distance and low power data transmission. 



Overall the system is designed to reduce the need for manual orchard inspection, improve early disease detection and provide useful data to farmers for a more efficient crop management.