TrimBot2020: an outdoor robot for automatic gardening

Abstract

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.