Robotic solutions for pot-plant nurseries Lorenzo Comba, Paolo Gay*, Davide Ricauda Aimonino Dipartimento di Economia e Ingegneria Agraria, Forestale e Ambientale, Università degli Studi di Torino, Via Leonardo da Vinci 44, Grugliasco (Torino), 10095 Italy *Corresponding author. E-mail: paolo.gay@unito.it Abstract Billion of pots are produced every year in Europe. In many Countries, in particular in Mediterranean area, pot plant nurseries involve a lot of manpower and the degree of mechanization is still low, affecting the competiveness of farms. Moreover, most operations performed on potted-plant are extremely repetitive (e.g. pots handling, trimming, granular fertilization) and some tasks are critical for operator’s safety (e.g. spray applications). A number of automatic machines and implements are available on the market, but in most cases the installation of fixed and expansive structures is required. The introduction of small multipurpose robotic platforms, able to navigate autonomously along pot rows, would reduce the manpower requirement improving, at the same time, work safety. The design and the kinematic study of an autonomous robotic platform conceived to operate in pot plant nurseries is presented in this paper. The robot is based on a four drive-and-steering wheels vehicle designed to host different implements to perform a number of heavy or dangerous operations on crops in automatic way. Key words: potted plants, robotic platform, kinematic study. 1. Introduction In the European agricultural scenario the production of potted plants holds an important role, with billions of pots of aromatic herbs, flowers and bedding plants produced every year. In the Northern Europe the production of potted plants is mainly conduct by big enterprises organized in advanced structured glasshouses. In Mediterranean Countries, especially in Italy, this sector is instead characterized by a great number of small and medium farms, with a consistent fragmentation of the market. In these countries the diffusion of automation of the productive processes is therefore obstructed by the limited investment capacity of the enterprises, which still prefer employ a lot of manpower, even if the operations manually performed are often dangerous and/or extremely repetitive. The best way to improve work productivity and reduce costs in small nurseries is thus the automation of selected cultural operations adopting multipurpose and autonomous robotic platforms. Such a machine should be characterized by a high degree of versatility, being able to adapt its movement to different working areas and to perform a wide range of crop operations (trimming, application of granular fertilizers, fertigation etc.). These characteristics would make the robotic platform economically sustainable also in small nurseries since a single machine would carry out different operations optimizing costs, whereas additional structures and/or facilities have not to be introduced unlike fixed-point machines. Moreover, the machine will improve operator’s safety and health, performing repetitive and dangerous tasks, such as spray applications of chemicals, without the presence of human operators (Sammos et al, 2005). Autonomous robots for agricultural applications have widely studied in scientific literature (see e.g. Comba et al., 2010; Bakker et al., 2010; Slaghter et al., 2008 for a comprehensives