SOLAR BASED AGRICULTURE ROBOT

Abstract

Agriculture requires continuous monitoring, irrigation, crop maintenance, and weed management. Conventional agricultural operations often depend heavily on manual labor and fossil-fuel-powered machinery, increasing operating cost and environmental impact. This paper presents the design and development of a solar-based agriculture robot capable of performing basic agricultural operations using renewable energy. The proposed robot consists of a four-wheel mobile platform, solar photovoltaic panel, rechargeable battery, DC geared motors, motor drivers, microcontroller, soil-moisture sensor, ultrasonic sensors, and an agricultural tool mechanism. Solar energy is converted into electrical energy using a photovoltaic panel and stored in a rechargeable battery. The stored energy powers the robot's drive motors, sensors, and control electronics. The robot is designed for applications such as soil-moisture monitoring, crop-row navigation, irrigation assistance, and basic weed-management operations. A prototype-oriented simulation and experimental evaluation were performed to study mobility, solar charging, battery performance, soil-moisture sensing, obstacle detection, and operating time. Representative results indicate that the proposed system can operate effectively on agricultural surfaces while reducing dependence on external electrical charging. Under the selected test conditions, the robot achieved approximately 0.42 m/s maximum speed, 3.5 hours of daily operating availability with solar energy support, and successful obstacle detection within the tested sensor range. The study demonstrates the potential of solar-powered mobile robots for sustainable and precisionoriented agricultural applications.