Heterogeneous Autonomous Robotic System in Viticulture and Mariculture
For millennia, viticulture and mariculture have been a component of human society. Both viticulture and mariculture are heavily reliant on human labor, with workers generally doing arduous, repetitive, sometimes even dangerous tasks for long periods of time. HEKTOR (Heterogeneous Autonomous Robotic System in Viticulture and Mariculture) project is looking for solutions to these issues. The main objective of the HEKTOR project is to realize a systematic solution for the coordination/cooperation of smart heterogeneous robots/vehicles (marine, land-based, and aerial vehicles) that are able to cooperate autonomously and assign tasks to each other in an open unstructured space. HEKTOR is designed as a modular and autonomous system, adapted for various missions in viticulture and mariculture with the foreseen possibility of human intervention during the performance of various inspection and intervention tasks. The lecture will cover the development and integration of various robotic platforms (all-terrain vehicle, autonomous catamaran, aerial drone, and remotely operated vehicle) and their cooperation-enabling subsystems (landing platform, tether management system, and underwater acoustic localization). Furthermore, results of autonomous monitoring, spraying and suckering tasks in viticulture, and biofouling estimation in mariculture will be presented.