# ROS-Based Unmanned Mobile Robot Platform for Agriculture
## 1 Introduction  
In rural areas, the proportion of elderly people keeps increasing, while the youth labor force participation rate is decreasing. As a result, rural areas, where there is insufficient workforce, have no choice but to attract manpower from outside. However, the reality is that it is difficult to recruit a new workforce. In addition, although recently, mechanization and the automation of agricultural work are progressing, efficient technology in the actual agricultural environment to replace the labor force has been lacking. Globally, climate change is evident, and the temperature is rising. Agricultural production in particular is very vulnerable to climate change. For every 1 degree Celsius increase in global average temperature, it is predicted that, on average, global production of wheat, rice, corn, and soybean will decrease by (6.0, 3.2, 7.4, and 3.1)%, respectively [1]. Climate change has become an even greater obstacle to farmers struggling with a shortage of labor. Therefore, in rural areas, the development of advanced agricultural work robots is considered an urgent task. To solve various problems [2; 3; 4; 5], mobile robots nowadays are working in both the industrial and non-industrial environments. Advances in mobile robots allow for a variety of uses. Warehouse managers use autonomous mobile robots to manage and move inventory [6]. Household vacuum cleaner robots are very common today as a general consumer product [7]. Robots that can work in home environments to help older people [8] are another area currently being researched. In particular, the mobile robot will show great efficiency and effectiveness when applied to the smart farm environment. In recent years, many robots have been developed to manage, and take care of, crops [9]. They are being developed to work autonomously, with minimal or no human intervention. For therobot to move autonomously, environmental awareness sensors, such as laser scans and depth cameras, are indispensable. Through the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithm and route planner for map building and location recognition, the robot can autonomously drive [10]. In particular, various roles of robots are required in agricultural fields. To meet these demands, various types of robots have been developed until recently. Agricultural robot technology has been widely studied and applied in planting, aquaculture, livestock, and poultry farming. In addition, Agricultural robots are also being used in crop agriculture for phenotyping, monitoring, mapping, crop management, environmental control, etc. Several agricultural harvesting robots have been developed. To harvest fruit, robots perform visual perception, position detection, segmentation, and 3D reconstruction, and compute spatial coordinates of objects [11; 12; 13; 14; 15]. [PERSON] et al. have developed an end-to-end autonomous coconut harvesting robot that can automatically climb coconut trees and detect fruit through a vision system [11]. [PERSON] et al. has developed a strawberry harvesting robot with picking speeds of 7.5 s per strawberry [12]. [PERSON] et al. used a CCD sensor to localize sweet-pepper in the image plane [13]. [PERSON] et al. developed a selective sweet-pepper harvesting robot [14]. [PERSON] et al. developed another sweet-pepper harvesting robot [15]. [PERSON] et al. developed another apple harvesting robot [16]. In agricultural production, monitoring is just as important as harvesting. Various robots for monitoring are also being developed. The European Union VineRobot project has developed an autonomous robot that measures grape growth, grape yield, grape composition, and soil moisture. The platform is a 4 WD Electric Monster Truck, which includes a navigation sensor, an infrared camera, and an RGB camera [17]. [PERSON] et al. developed a plant health monitoring robot based on 5-Wheel and 6-chassis [18]. [PERSON] et al. developed crop disease detection based on 4-wheel [19]. Robot technology is a powerful tool for realizing targeted actions in agriculture. [PERSON] et al.