Development of a mobile robot-based combined sensor platform to determine the correlation between soil penetration resistance and electrical conductivity

Open-field farming involves successive major processes such as preparation of soil, planting the seed, adding pesticides and fertilizers, irrigation, cultivation, and harvest. The main aim of all processes is to achieve maximum yield out of the available agricultural landscape. It is necessary to collect geo-referenced descriptive data on soil characteristics, such as soil penetration resistance and electrical conductivity before starting all these processes. In this context, agricultural robots offer highly promising technologies providing valuable soil data, lower production costs, reduced manual labour, and maximum crop efficiency.