Design Concept for Robot-Mounted Dielectric Sensor for On-Field Soil Nutrient Determination

This work elaborates on the conceptual design of a robotic-mounted dielectric sensor for estimating materials' dielectric constant, Conductivity, and moisture content using an s-parameter of the microwave reflected from the material under test. The work is categorized into two parts: designing and testing a dielectric sensor and explaining a robot's conceptual and functional design for a sensor to be mounted. The proposed prototype circuit of a sensor module designed to operate at ten 10 GHz contains a microcontroller programmed to receive and process the signals from the sensor. Wirelessly, the Bluetooth module (HC-05) was used to send the measured values to the customized Robboremo App displayed on the mobile phone. The experimental results from the already designed sensor module show a strong consensus between the measured results and those from the network analysis, confirming that the proposed sensing module, when integrated with the movable robot, will detect the content of nutrients of soil in the farm using a non-contact and non-destructive method.