TrimBot2020: an outdoor robot for automatic gardening
This addresses the need for automation in agriculture and gardening, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing robotic applications like autonomous lawn mowers.
The paper introduces TrimBot2020, a robot developed to tackle the problem of automating outdoor gardening tasks, specifically bush trimming and rose pruning, as part of an EU-funded project to create a prototype.
Robots are increasingly present in modern industry and also in everyday life. Their applications range from health-related situations, for assistance to elderly people or in surgical operations, to automatic and driver-less vehicles (on wheels or flying) or for driving assistance. Recently, an interest towards robotics applied in agriculture and gardening has arisen, with applications to automatic seeding and cropping or to plant disease control, etc. Autonomous lawn mowers are succesful market applications of gardening robotics. In this paper, we present a novel robot that is developed within the TrimBot2020 project, funded by the EU H2020 program. The project aims at prototyping the first outdoor robot for automatic bush trimming and rose pruning.