2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Development of an Autonomous paddy weeding robot mounted on Artificial Intelligence

Research Project

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Project/Area Number	20K06331
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Section	一般
Review Section	Basic Section 41040:Agricultural environmental engineering and agricultural information engineering-related
Research Institution	Tsuyama National College of Technology
Principal Investigator	Sori Hitoshi 津山工業高等専門学校, 総合理工学科, 教授 (10353327)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	井上浩行津山工業高等専門学校, 総合理工学科, 教授 (00232554) 杉本大志愛媛大学, 理工学研究科(工学系), 助教 (40780424)
Project Period (FY)	2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
Keywords	自律型ロボット / 水田除草 / ディープラーニング
Outline of Final Research Achievements	As an herbicide-free weeding method, our research group are developing an autonomous running paddy weeding robot that can move along rice rows and turn around. In this study, in order to mount the paddy weeding robot on a situational judgment function，we aim to construct a situational judgment function that input information obtained from camera sensors and LiDAR. First, we propose a detecting system which can detect rice seedlings from images taken by a camera sensor using the YOLO. From the experimental results, we confirmed that a detection system that sorted rice seedlings by growth obtained high values in the precision and recall rates, which are evaluation indices. Next, we propose a self-location estimation method which can estimate self-location of the paddy weeding robot from measured data taken by a LiDAR. From the experimental results, we confirmed that the self-location estimation error of the paddy weeding robot becomes smaller using the shortest distance method.
Free Research Field	制御工学
Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements	著者らが提案する自律型水田除草ロボットが実用化された場合，稲作において従事者の高齢化や人手不足の解消，新規就農者の参入ならびにスマート農業の加速化させる可能性を有する。自律型水田除草ロボットにセンサ情報を入力とする状況判断機能を搭載している事例は少なく，AI，ICT，ロボット技術などの先端技術と農業技術を融合させたスマート農業では，本研究での取り組みは社会的にも意義がある。