The challenge

The challenge was to equip farms with a functioning prototype solution, consisting of a robot capable of operating autonomously in the typical situations of some crops examined, ensuring adequate traction and mobility for the different surfaces of the land that may arise, able to communicate and interface in real time both with operators in the field and with information systems from which to receive instructions.

The solution

Polibot is the name of the farmer robot, designed and developed jointly by the Robotic Mobility Lab of the Polytechnic of Bari and the STIIMA Institute of the CNR capable of demonstrating the use of effective robotic technologies in agriculture. It is equipped with an advanced perception system that provides accurate localization and awareness of the environment towards full autonomy in precision farming applications.

The prototype was extensively tested at the STEMS pilot site in Turin, Italy, where the autonomous navigation system was fine-tuned on different terrains including concrete, asphalt, dirt, grass and dirt tracks with different weather conditions. roughness of the terrain. Subsequently Polibot was used in an experimental and commercial vineyard, with variable slopes, in which some cultivation operations commonly carried out by man were carried out.

The pilot study was also followed and documented by ATLAS – Agricultural Interoperability and Analysis system, a project that received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

To watch Polibot at work, two videos have been produced, which we make available below.