IMoRfA: Intelligent Mobile Robots for Agriculture

Project Description

Agriculture is under pressure as rural populations shrink and labor-intensive seasonal work becomes harder to staff. Robotics can mitigate these constraints by taking over repetitive, physically demanding tasks and improving the use of limited labor and time. Large farms already leverage satellite-guided machinery for structured fields, but this approach does not translate well to regions like the vineyards of Lower Franconia. These vineyards were often established decades ago, follow irregular layouts, and lie on steep or uneven terrain, making them poorly suited for conventional automated systems.

This project aims to advance agricultural robotics with a focus on such challenging vineyard environments. Although several autonomous navigation solutions exist, most still depend on manual setup to define initial paths or reference structures. On sloped terrain, that requirement exposes humans to unnecessary risk. To eliminate this hazard and reduce setup overhead, we are developing a system that allows a robot to autonomously explore and navigate a vineyard using an a priori map derived from remote-sensing imagery, minimizing human involvement in the initial deployment phase.