Arecanut Tree-Climbing and Pesticide Spraying Robot using Servo Controlled Nozzle

The lack of availability of skilled and efficient labor is a huge problem in the agricultural sector, hence developing automated alternates is the need of the hour. When it comes to growing Arecanut especially in damp geographical regions use of pesticides is inevitable. This paper aims at the design of a rugged and light-weight Semi-Autonomous Robot which can ascend the areca tree with a single high torque driving motor and spray the pesticides through a Laser guided servo-controlled nozzle. The spring based gripping can adjust automatically according to the varying trunk diameter and provides the required traction for climbing the tree. It uses microcontroller ATMEGA 32 as the main processing unit for control, transmission and reception. HT12 Encoder and Decoder pair is used with RF transmitter/receiver pair. This robot is designed to be operable by a layman from a remote control. This can surely eliminate the problem of insufficiency of human labor and contribute to better quality and yield.