The usage of drones and rovers helps to overcome the limitations of traditional agriculture which has been predominantly human-intensive, for carrying out tasks such as removal of weeds and spraying of fertilizers and pesticides. Drones and rovers are helping to realize precision agriculture and farmers with improved monitoring and surveying at affordable costs. Major benefits have come for vertical farming and fields with irrigation canals. However, drones have a limitation of flight time due to payload constraints. Rovers have limitations in vertical farming and obstacles like canals in agricultural fields. To meet the different requirements of multiple terrains and vertical farming in agriculture, we propose an autonomous hybrid drone-rover vehicle that combines the advantages of both rovers and drones. The prototype is described along with experimental results regarding its ability to avoid obstacles, pluck weeds and spray pesticides.

翻译：无人机和地面车的应用有助于克服传统农业过度依赖人力的局限性，例如在杂草清除、肥料与农药喷洒等任务中。无人机和地面车正以可负担的成本实现精准农业，帮助农民改进监测与勘察工作，尤其在垂直农业和含灌溉渠的田地中带来了显著效益。然而，由于载荷限制，无人机的续航时间存在局限；地面车在垂直农业和田间障碍（如灌溉渠）场景中也存在局限性。为满足农业中多种地形与垂直农业的不同需求，我们提出了一种融合地面车与无人机优势的自主混合无人机-地面车。本文描述了该原型系统的设计，并展示了其在避障、拔除杂草及喷洒农药方面的实验结果。