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Organic fertilizers have been used since the dawn of mankind to improve soil fertility and promote crop growth. However, the process of preparing organic fertilizers for use in agricultural activities is a labour-intensive and time-consuming procedure. Thus, in order to reduce labour costs and improve the efficiency of organic fertilizer preparation, automated organic fertilizer mixers were developed. For this research work, an improved organic fertilizer mixer based on the Internet of Things (IoT) technology capable of monitoring the status of fertilizer production remotely and providing updates and alerts to workers was developed. The aim of this work was to further reduce labour workload and costs, thus increasing efficiency of the organic fertilizer mixing process. In order to accommodate the IoT monitoring system, several modifications and design changes were carried out on the prototype of an automated organic fertilizer mixer. Tests conducted on the prototype unit showed that it performs as required. The IoT monitoring system successfully captures and uploads information on the weight of agricultural waste mixture in the storage drum to the IoT platform. This information can then be used to alert workers on when to add more agricultural waste material to the mixture or remove the processed organic fertilizer. Furthermore, an overall operational cost comparison of different organic fertilizer production methods showed that the automated organic fertilizer prototype provides operational cost savings of over 5 times when compared to current automated systems. Future work includes further automation to the agricultural waste filling and organic fertilizer removal process.

The agriculture industry is one that is highly resource- and labour-intensive. As such, farmers are increasingly turning to technology and automation to address this issue. However, agricultural robots are far too complicated, slow, and costly to be made publicly available. As a result, the agriculture sector still lags behind in integrating modern technologies. This research paper details the development of a low-cost agricultural robot for spraying fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture fields as well as for general crop monitoring. The prototype system is a two-wheeled robot that consists of a mobile base, a spraying mechanism, a wireless controller for controlling the robot movement, and a camera for crop health and growth monitoring as well as detecting the presence of pests in the agriculture field. Tests conducted on the prototype system show that while the productivity of the robot in terms of crop coverage is slightly lower than a human worker, the labour cost savings afforded by the agricultural robot prototype is much greater as it functions completely in an autonomous mode and only requires the operator to control the robot when placing it at the start of the crop path. Furthermore, the prototype system also provides greater resource savings and reduction in the contamination of underground water sources due to leeching process, thus achieving precision agriculture goals. Lastly, the excellent battery life of the prototype system ensures that there will be no increase in the operation times and reduction in the efficiency of the fertilizer and pesticide spraying process due to the recharging times when replacing human workers. Future recommendations include making the agricultural robot fully autonomous, using either a rail- or line-following system, to further reduce the labour requirements and costs.

Agricultural drones are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) applied to farming in order to help increase crop production and improve farm efficiency. Crop-dusting drones are able to spray powdered fertilizer, pesticide, or insecticide on crops from the air, resulting in reduced costs and increased efficiency compared to traditional methods. The objective of this research work was to improve and enhance the performance of the crop-dusting process using agricultural drones. This research paper details the development of an improved storage container design and stabilized release mechanism for crop-dusting. To stabilise the release of payload when the drone is moving or swaying in the air, a gimbal mechanism was added to the release mechanism in which weights were used to produce constant downward force which balances the mechanism. Tests conducted on the prototype system showed that it performs as required. The stabilization tests show an improvement in accuracy of granule spread when using the stabilized release mechanism developed in this research work. As such, the wastage of fertilizers and pesticides can be reduced. The prototype system was also found to much more capable at carrying heavier loads for a longer period of time compared to current designs. Thus, using the prototype system developed for this research work, the size of storage container as well as the weight of fertilizer or pesticide granule payloads can be increased.

Reports show that 40% of global carbon emissions come from energy consumed in buildings, so organizations around the world continuously seek ways to reduce their buildings energy consumption. Research identifies three main approaches; Retrofitting, the use of Low Carbon Buildings (LCB), and implementing Energy Management Systems (EMS). However, other factors could affect the success of these approaches; climate and local weather, building types, social acceptance, and implementation. This paper reviews and evaluates 50 reports on these implementations, and uses that evaluation to identify the most effective approach to reduce buildings carbon footprint. In this evaluation, authors used the reported success rate (in reducing carbon footprint) as key parameter, they then cross-checked this with origin of reports (country, climate region), building type, and implementation thoroughness. This allowed the authors to identify not only the best approach, but also understand the impact of these other factors on the reported success rate. Retrofitting was implemented the most (58%) but with varying success (2% to 49% reductions), this variation is attributed to the current state of the buildings and the level/method of retrofitting applied. LCB showed the highest reductions as energy saving measures were preplanned before building construction, this however limits LCB to new and planned buildings. Even though EMS showed results comparable to Retrofitting and required a fraction of the costs/effort, only 14% implemented it, this is an indication of the level of social awareness in the region on the need to reduce carbon footprint and its impact on the world’s climate.

Profitability in production farming depends on making correct and timely operational decisions based on current conditions and historical data. Precision agriculture is a comprehensive system designed to optimize agricultural production by carefully tailoring soil and crop management to correspond to the unique conditions found in each field while maintaining environmental quality. This research paper details the development of a portable and wireless sensor network system to remotely monitor the environmental parameters in an agriculture field and provide field managers with alerts and information regarding current conditions while saving the data in a database for future reference. The data acquisition unit consisting of sensors and microcontroller captures the environmental parameter data such as temperature, humidity, light intensity, and soil moisture content. By utilizing Internet of Things technology, the information captured by the sensors is uploaded wirelessly to the cloud server and can be viewed by users from anywhere in the world via an Internet-enabled device. The rugged and water-resistant enclosure ensures that the system can be used in outdoor agriculture fields, while a solar power supply eliminates cabling needs and reduces maintenance of sensor nodes. Tests conducted on the system show that it can successfully capture and display environmental parameter data to users.

This research paper presents the development of a prototype of smart helmet system, consisting of a Bluetooth controller which connects to a mobile phone and is powered by a solar rechargeable battery. Using this system, users can answer or make calls, listen to music and GPS navigation instructions, and control other smart applications via voice commands from a mobile phone without having to use the device. Easy access buttons allow users to control these functions directly from the helmet. Tests conducted on the smart helmet prototype showed that it was able to connect to a mobile phone, speaker volume was safe and adequate, clarity of the microphone was satisfactory, and the battery life of the device was acceptable. Furthermore, the comfort of the helmet was maintained, resulting in a smart helmet that allows the rider to maintain focus and reduces distractions, which in turn increases motorcyclist safety.

In recent years, floods have increased in frequency and intensity, causing tremendous hardship. In badly affected regions, mostly the rural areas, Weir-type floodgates are the only measure against floods. However, these manually operated gates are numerous and scattered over vast areas. This makes flood mitigation efforts very challenging, which causes severe devastation. Current solutions to automate the floodgates are expensive, black-boxed, and focused on individual gates. In this paper, we present a Centralized Flood Monitoring and Coordination System developed through the Internet of Things (IoT) and other open-source technologies. For this work, we developed a working prototype of an autonomous floodgate that opens/closes according to the level of water. We also developed the required program to allow the gate controller to publish its data through the IoT gateway to the cloud. The data was then captured and viewed on a number of IoT clients, both for individuals and groups of floodgates, in real time. The developed system proved successful as the autonomous gates were monitored remotely through the established IoT framework, with room for future development and improvement. This paper serves as a proof of concept and a preparation for real, on-site implementation of the IoT-floodgates.

As the human population continues to grow, the number of cars and other vehicles in cities continues to grow. This growth, however, is coupled with an increasing demand for land for buildings, industry, housing, and agriculture purposes. This leaves very little land for parking spaces and slots in the cities. Resulting in massive jams forming daily, drivers stuck in parking lots looking for a spot to park, be it offices, schools, and places of work. These jams result in wasted invaluable accumulated man-hours, time wasted that could, otherwise, be better utilized. Hence, there is a need for an automated parking system, one that is able to utilize the available limited space, reduce lost man-hours, and provide an environmentally friendly solution to the parking-lot jams. In this paper, we investigate the existing technologies for automated parking systems and develop a working prototype of a Rotary Parking System, in-line with the Smart-City needs. Drivers can either use buttons, their smart phones, or other identifying methods to park their cars. The paper presents the mechanical design steps, components used, and the programming of the developed system. Then, the developed system is evaluated. Results show successful implementation of the developed system; a working prototype as well as a simulated system was developed for this work and data show that, indeed, the developed Rotary parking system has the potential to reduce the number of lost man-hours wasted on parking cars and help reduce its related stress, further improving the quality of life there.

One of the challenges of outdoor robots is developing effective portable Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) frameworks. Hand-held devices offer a practical solution. By equipping these devices with robot software, they can be made to interact with the outdoor robots. Android devices are ideal as they are open source and can be integrated with robots powered by the Robot Operating System (ROS), also open source. However, due to the limits of rosjava, the mechanism that links ROS with android, and the conflicting modes of operation between ROS and android, current implementations of ROS-android offer limited robot applications that do not support advanced operations such as autonomous navigation and others. This paper implements selective compartmentalization to overcome these limitations, by combining ROS with android through a number of ROS and android bridges that would facilitate the development of advanced robot applications. Through the proposed method, authors were able to develop a portable HRI framework that allowed human operators to supervise an outdoor mobile robot while it performed an autonomous task. From their mobile devices, users were able to initialize the robot, configure its motion, and monitor its progress. Also, users were able to reprogram the robot to perform new tasks (not previously planned) through a creative use of features offered in the developed HRI framework. Also, user cognitive effort was reported to be low as evident by the positive score on the NASA-TLX scale test which was corroborated with robot performance data. This paper presents the detailed development and implementation steps.

Concerns over food security have risen sharply in recent years. The growing human population, coupled with the shrinking agriculture resources, caused many governments and international conglomerates around the world to seek new ways to improve agriculture efficiency. This has lead to increased interest, and spending, in Agriculture Robotics. In Part 1 of this work, research activities on agriculture robotics were reviewed, with many showing promising results. However, agriculture robots remain experimental and far from being implemented on large operational scales. This paper investigates the possible reasons for this phenomena, by continuing the review of agriculture robots, only this time focusing on practicality and feasibility. Upon extensive review and analysis, the authors concluded that practical agriculture robots rely not only on advances in robotics, but also on the presence of a support infrastructure. This infrastructure encompasses all services and technologies needed by agriculture robots while in operation, this include a reliable wireless connection, an effective framework for Human Robot Interaction (HRI) between robots and agriculture workers, and a framework for software sharing and re-use. Without such infrastructure being in place, agriculture robots, no matter how advanced in design they could be, would remain impractical and infeasible. However, for many organizations, the technological and monitory costs of establishing such infrastructure could be very prohibitive, which renders agriculture robots uneconomical and enviable. Therefore, the paper concludes that the key to practical agriculture robotics is to find a novel, cost-effective, and a reliable approach to develop the support infrastructure needed for agriculture robots.

With the exponential rise in human population, the need for energy is becoming a real challenge to many countries around the world. Shortages in fossil sources of energy and its rising prices are beginning to cause many socio-economic problems and unrest in many parts of the world. This brings the need and importance of finding alternative and reliable sources of power. In recent years, the power of ocean waves began to attract attention. In this article, a design of the Wave Power Generator device is presented. This design is introduced to improve the efficiency. The proposed design is compared with an existing device that exploits the sea waves, converting the its energy to electrical power. This study aims to show that the instrument would achieve a higher efficiency by generating a greater total of electricity with the appropriate design and focus. The study is simulated using MATLAB. Results of the study show the electricity energy generated improved up to 80% in contrast to the present instrument. The results of this work could lead the way towards more active implementations of wave power generators and the use of sustainable energy resources.

Pipeline or mass transport line are the chief applications which are typically involved in the oil and gas industries. After various background studies, the pipeline involved in such industries comes from a high technology design and material of use. Hence, inspection and maintenance must be done frequently to ensure the pipeline can be used in an excellent working state. The inspection on pipeline must be done before and after its maintenance. However, it is difficult to inspect within the pipe to ensure it is in good condition. Currently, various new types of technology are used for inspection purposes specifically by means of the Non-Destructive Testing, but it highly costly. Thus, this project focuses on the design and development of an inspection robot to perform a pipeline inspection. Some applications that can accommodate to the designing of a robot is that the robot is able to manoeuvre inside the pipeline wirelessly and give a visual interface while proceeding it. Therefore, this project shows the development processes included in the design and development of an inspection robot for the oil and gas applications.

Rise in demand for food worldwide has led the agriculture industry to shift towards Corporate Agriculture; major conglomerates operate huge lands with Precision Farming; maximizing outputs and utilization of resources while reduce waste and costs. This efficiency required the introduction of Automation and Robotics in Agriculture, which led to great technological challenges. This in turn sparked interest in research in the area of Agriculture Mobile Robots (AMRs). This paper reviews research in this area for the last 5 years; it highlights examples of robots already in action in fields around the world, identifies trends and important sub-topics, and finally outlines the direction of where research in Mobile Agriculture Robots is heading.

One of the biggest challenges in mechanical robotics design is the balance between structural integrity and flexibility. An industrial robotic gripper could be technically advanced, however it contains only 1 Degree of Freedom (DOF). If one is to add more DOFs the design would become complex. On the other hand, the human wrist and fingers contain 23 DOFs, and is very lightweight and highly flexible. Robotics are becoming more and more part of our social life, they are more and more being incorporated in social, medical, and personal application. Therefore, for such robots to be effective, they need to mimic human performance, both in performance as well as in mechanical design. In this work, a Humanoid Gripper is designed and built to mimic a simplified version of a human wrist and fingers. This is attempted by mimicking insect and human designs of grippes. The main challenge was to insure that the gripper is structurally sound, but at the same time flexible and lightweight. A combination of light weight material and a unique design of finger actuators were applied. The gripper is controlled by a PARALLAX servo controller 28823 (PSCI), which mounted on the assembly itself. At the end, a 6 DOF humanoid gripper made of lightweight material, similar in size to the human arm, and is able to carry a weight of 1 Kg has been designed and built.