Software for Inspection of Soil Resources in Solanum Tuberosum Crops

Abstract

This paper presents a custom-developed software for the inspection of soil nutritional variables in Solanum tuberosum crops. This software is installed on a robotic platform that facilitates phenological inspection by measuring and recording some variables associated with the soil resources available to the plants (temperature, pH, and relative humidity). The software was programmed in Python 3.11 using the object-oriented programming paradigm. Its implementation took place on a robotic platform consisting of a Raspberry Pi4 model B with the Raspberry piOS operating system, which served as a single-board embedded computer. It also included a data acquisition board built with an ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller, and four high-torque gear motors in differential configuration. The software integrates the monitoring and registration strategies of the mentioned variables with the vehicle locomotion control. The results show that it is possible to develop low-cost systems using efficient, easy-to-manage, and potentially scalable software architectures. It was possible to develop software that allows: 1) monitoring the aforementioned variables; 2) keeping a constant record of the behavior of these variables; and 3) observing the crop through a camera. © 2024 IEEE.