The Design and Development of Delta Arm for Multi-Purpose Agribots

Abstract

Many challenges and obstacles prevail in the agricultural fields, such as weed removal, horticulture, and spraying herbicides and fertilizers. Individual robots for all these tasks cost a lot, which ordinary farmers cannot afford. The delta arm has to perform versatile functions like spraying and weed removal with great accuracy and reduced environmental impact. The primary objective of this research is to design a delta arm that can move in all directions efficiently. The driving and driven arm in the delta arm design should be correlated, which helps with the proper positioning of the end effector carrier. Similarly, the moving platform and the fixed platform are designed in a circular form. These measurements give a proper design and make the robotic arm work properly as it can move in all three degrees of freedom in XYZ directions. The NVIDIA jetson orin nano operates as the controlling unit of the delta arm. The study proved that the delta arm had achieved an accuracy rate of 98% at a speed of 107.5 mm/s, making it well-suited for agricultural field operations. In addition, the delta arm exhibits the capability to handle an end effector weighing up to 300 g. Therefore, introducing the delta arm agribot in the row-based agricultural field can make a revolution in the upcoming years as it can perform versatile tasks at a high speed.