Design a Smart Mini Robot for Indoor Plant Watering System

Abstract

Nowadays, people tend to forget to fulfill the watering needs and give adequate care for the plants due to their busy routine life, resulting in shorter lifespan of the plants. Here, we present the design and development of fully autonomous, cost effective and efficient system for watering indoor plants that are placed on a surface at even distance. The system comprised of a smart mini robot which is comprised of an Arduino microcontroller, wheels, motors, motor drive, water tank, water pump, a wireless communication radio. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) module has the main functions such as navigation; carry water for watering the plants and uses wireless communication to communicate with the plant subsystem. The other main part of the system is potted plants, which is comprised of Arduino microcontroller, soil moisture sensor and wireless communication module which are responsible for functions such as sense the amount of moisture present in the soil and send signals to the smart mini robot when in need of water. As per the amount of soil moisture present in the soil, which is sensed by sensing module, the watering needs of the plants will be fulfilled by the smart mini robot. This smart mini robot is fully capable of receiving the signal from the potted plants, navigate towards plants, locating the plants and pumping the water to the plants without any human intervention. To Autonomously maneuver near the mobile robot, a predefined path is used and for identifying each plant in the system, an RFID tag is attached to each plant. Apart from the architecture this paper also describes the comprehensive implementation of the system. This paper concludes with the system performance evaluation and future project extensions where this system can be reviewed and enhanced.