Portable agricultural robot for continuous apparent soil electrical conductivity measurements to improve irrigation practices

Abstract

Apparatus and methods for determining soil moisture. An apparatus includes a mobile platform to traverse an agricultural field, a sensor physically coupled to the mobile platform, the sensor to make one or more soil apparent electrical conductivity measurements, and a control system mounted on the chassis and communicatively coupled to the sensor. A method includes navigating an agricultural field with a mobile platform, generating a real-time position and orientation for the mobile platform, performing one or more soil apparent electrical conductivity measurements from a sensor physically coupled to the mobile platform, synchronizing the one or more soil apparent electrical conductivity measurements with the real-time position, geospatial mapping and autonomously logging the one or more soil apparent electrical conductivity measurements, and processing each of the one or more soil apparent electrical conductivity measurements to generate a soil moisture value.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.