Agricultural RoboticsIntermediate
ALFRED: Requirement-driven development of an open-source mobile manipulator for long-term plant monitoring
Preprint. The authors built ALFRED, an open-source mobile manipulator made from commercial parts, and ran it for a year of monthly forest surveys (528 traversals) with no missed collection. Model-based comparisons across three builds show usable arm workspace rising from 34.0% to 66.1% of reachable poses and only the final build keeps the frame-mounted LiDAR clear forward and backward. This matters because it provides a reproducible, requirement-driven platform and release package for repeated close-range plant monitoring.