Autonomous tractor to plough and harvest within a laser perimeter

Abstract

The world as we know is rapidly changing, the world population is ever growing and with this increased population growth the never ending need for food is also growing like never before. But on the contrary, our careers are getting more industrial or corporate based whereas it should be more agriculture based to cope up with the demand of food all over the world. One of the main reason towards this negligence towards agriculture is because farming requires a lot of manual labor and hard work, moreover the profit is also very limited compared to the hard work done, especially in Bangladesh. One of the most difficult task for the farmers in the agriculture field is the ploughing of the land. A lot of manual labor and hard work is needed to do this. Harvesting crops also takes a lot of time and energy. Thus to reduce this huge work load of the farmers we have introduced an autonomous ploughing and harvesting system for the farmers. The plough will be attached at the rear side of the tractor which can be lowered or raised with the help of an actuator. Two blades are attached at the front side of the tractor which rotates with the power of DC motors attached with the blades. It will help to cut down the crops for harvesting. To set a perimeter of the field we have used Laser diodes. To ensure the tractor stays inside the perimeter we added LDRs to the tractor so that it can turn itself when the laser rays hits it at each end of the field. In order to stop the tractor when it is done ploughing the field we used sonar sensor at the end point of the field and RF module to communicate with the tractor, in order to stop it when it reaches the end point and comes in range of the sonar sensor. The tractor is powered by rechargeable Lead Acid batteries. In order to ensure that all the components gets their required powers to complete their function, we used relays and switches. To automatically drive the tractor around the whole field and take the turns at the edges of the field smoothly, we installed glass motors to power the tractor in rotating its wheel in rough surface and IR sensors embedded with encoders in the wheels of the tractor which will help it to turn with precision at both ends of the field. With all these equipment combined our tractor can plough and harvest a whole field automatically without any human intervention, thus reducing the work load of the farmers for ploughing and crop harvesting to a great extent.