Research on the evaluation method of agricultural intelligent robot design solutions

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 18; no. 3; p. e0281554
• Main Authors: Tang, Qian, Luo, Ying-Wen, Wu, Xiao-Di
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 23.03.2023; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Agricultural industry; Agriculture; Analytic hierarchy process; Biology and Life Sciences; Crop growth; Cropping systems; Decision making; Design; Design analysis; Design factors; Digital agriculture; Engineering and Technology; Entropy; Environmental aspects; Evaluation; Farms; Humans; Internet of Things; Methods; Nigeria; People and Places; Physical Sciences; Planting; Product development; Ranking; Robotics; Robots; Sensors; Social Sciences; Technology application; Traditional farming; User requirements; Weighting methods; Nigeria
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281554

At present, agricultural robots are produced in large quantities and used in agricultural planting, and the traditional agricultural model is gradually shifting to rely on the Internet of Things and sensors to accurately detect crop growth information. The scientific and rational design of agricultural robots plays a huge role in planting and production efficiency, however, the factors affecting their design are complex and ambiguous, so it is necessary to use a rational evaluation system to make a preferential decision among multiple design options. In order to reduce the subjectivity and blindness of program selection in the process of agricultural robot design, make the decision more objective and reasonable, and thus enhance the practicality and scientificity of the program, a new comprehensive evaluation method based on user requirements is proposed. First, after researching and interviewing users and farming operations, obtaining raw information on requirements, using the Kano model to classify the requirements and establishing an evaluation index system. Secondly, the combination of hierarchical analysis(AHP) and entropy weighting method is used to assign weights to the evaluation index system, calculate the weight value and importance ranking of each index, and carry out various program designs based on the ranking. Finally, the VIKOR method was applied to evaluate and rank the design solutions. The new evaluation method can better complete the preferential decision of the agricultural robot design scheme and get a more perfect design scheme, which reduces the influence of human subjective thinking in the decision-making process. The method not only corrects the traditional evaluation method, but also effectively improves the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the design evaluation process. It also provides a reference for designers to preferably select design solutions and promotes the development of small mobile machines in the context of smart agriculture.