Presentation overview

Robotics in agriculture

Human-Robot Interaction and Teleoperated robots

Target selection and Spraying

Usability evaluation results

Conclusion

Robotics in Agriculture

• Is there a need? – Shortage of farm labor workers – Farmer population decrease/aging – Need for intensive crop and livestock production to

secure food availability

• Robot applications – Harvesting, seeding, weeding, spraying,…

• Advantages – Accuracy, consistency, hard/dangerous, respective

and tedious work

• Challenges – Unstructured, unpredicted environment, variability,

volatility

HRI and Teleoperated robots

Human-Robot Cooperation

User Interface

Human-Robot

Interaction

HRI Awareness

– Farmer-AgriRobot: is the understanding that the farmer has of the location, activities, status and surroundings of the agrirobot;

– AgriRobot-Farmer: is the knowledge that the agrirobot has of the farmer’s commands necessary to direct its activities and the constraints under which it must operate”

HRI is the study of humans, robots and the

ways they influence each other

Why Human-Robot Cooperation? Why Spraying?

• Take advantage of both robot accuracy and consistency and human perception and know how

• Spraying – Selective spraying can reduce pesticide use by

30% to 60%1

– HO vs. HR (increased detection +4%)2 – Autonomous robot vs. HR (increased detection

+14%)2

– Remove human from hazardous situation, protect the environment, and consumers

1

Groudy et al (2001) 2

Bechar and Edan (2003), Berenstein et al. (2010)

Spraying grapevines with a tractor sprayer (open field)

Spraying grapevines inside a greenhouse with a hand sprayer

AgriRobot Sprayer

Target selection

• Applications

– Pruning

– Harvesting

– Disease identification/treatment

– Spraying

– …

Materials and methods

• Usability of different interaction modes – Pointing device (PC and mouse)

– Digital pen and interactive whiteboard

– Gesture-based interface (Wiimote)

• Participants – Practitioners (farmers and agronomists)

– University students (Computer Science)

• Simulated robot camera

Interaction Devices

PC + Mouse Digital pen + Interaction board Wiimote + Projector

Research results

• Based on perceived usability questionnaire*

Question Mouse (Mean)

Wiimote (Mean)

Digital Pen (Mean)

Ease of use 4.58 2.16 4.41

Learnability 4.66 3.34 4.70

Efficiency 4.58 2.74 4.56

Expected functionality 4.74 3.62 4.64

Would use for this work 4.60 2.60 4.34

Would recommend the system 4.70 2.76 4.34

Next time would be easy to remember how to use it 4.94 4.14 4.92

The system was attractive 4.44 3.90 4.72

User Experience satisfaction 4.80 3.64 4.72

* ratings (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree)

Research results

• Based on log file analysis

– Pointing devices (digital-pen and mouse) are more effective interaction modes compared to a gesture based interface (Wiimote)

0 200 400

Mean number of grapes clusters

selected

Wiimote

Mouse

DigitalPen

Conclusion - Future Work

• Initial results from the usability evaluation of a prototype user interface using three different input devices for target selection

• The results confirm that pointing devices are more effective for target selection, compared to gesture based interfaces

• Future work will include the design and implementation of a user interface for robot navigation and selective spraying