Articles
Development of a robotic solution to control slugs in lettuce crops
Article number
1433_11
Pages
89 – 94
Language
English
Abstract
Slugs are important pests in several horticultural crops such as lettuce and can cause considerable damage through feeding as well as contamination of the product.
In addition to preventive measures, the application of slug pellets is currently widely used to control slug population.
The aim of the study presented here is to develop an alternative robotic solution that is able to monitor the field, detect slugs and make them harmless using physical control methods.
A research consortium consisting of three project partners has been established for this purpose: the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Kassel, the company Hentschel System GmbH from Hannover and the Institute for Application Techniques in Plant Protection at the Julius Kühn-Institute in Braunschweig.
Within the project, a prototype of an autonomous driving robot equipped with tracks has been built.
On the vehicle is mounted a robotic arm, which is able to assume all positions around the lettuce plant.
By means of a close-range 3D depth camera and deep learning model (YOLOv5s), slugs are detected on lettuce in the field under different weather and light conditions and the 3D coordinates of the centre of them are calculated.
To control the slugs, various methods were taken into account and assessed.
In addition to chemical and biological methods, also various physical methods can be considered.
Under laboratory conditions, collecting slugs from the lettuce plant through vacuum suction has been proven to be effective against individuals with different size and weight classes and therefore, it has been chosen as control method to be further implemented.
Ongoing research on the development of this robotic control solution is presented here.
In addition to preventive measures, the application of slug pellets is currently widely used to control slug population.
The aim of the study presented here is to develop an alternative robotic solution that is able to monitor the field, detect slugs and make them harmless using physical control methods.
A research consortium consisting of three project partners has been established for this purpose: the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Kassel, the company Hentschel System GmbH from Hannover and the Institute for Application Techniques in Plant Protection at the Julius Kühn-Institute in Braunschweig.
Within the project, a prototype of an autonomous driving robot equipped with tracks has been built.
On the vehicle is mounted a robotic arm, which is able to assume all positions around the lettuce plant.
By means of a close-range 3D depth camera and deep learning model (YOLOv5s), slugs are detected on lettuce in the field under different weather and light conditions and the 3D coordinates of the centre of them are calculated.
To control the slugs, various methods were taken into account and assessed.
In addition to chemical and biological methods, also various physical methods can be considered.
Under laboratory conditions, collecting slugs from the lettuce plant through vacuum suction has been proven to be effective against individuals with different size and weight classes and therefore, it has been chosen as control method to be further implemented.
Ongoing research on the development of this robotic control solution is presented here.
Authors
G.A. Puliga, D. von Hörsten, M. Hassanzadehtalouki, A. Nasirahmadi, U. Wilczek, D. Kirchner, J.K. Wegener
Keywords
robotics, slugs, horticultural crops, lettuce, machine learning
Online Articles (41)