Agriculture AI
Robotics
Patented · Commercialised
IPR India · 2023
Autonomous Crop Surveillance Rover
An AI-powered rover that autonomously patrols farmland, detects crop diseases at early
stages using CNNs, and connects farmers directly to treatment resources — patented and commercialised by HEXAIND
Technologies.
CNN · Transfer Learning · IoT · Line Tracking
IPR — Intellectual Property India
India feeds 1.4 billion people. But erratic weather and disease outbreaks cost farmers entire
seasons — often because diseases go undetected until it's too late. Traditional monitoring requires constant
manual inspection across vast fields. This project builds a self-navigating rover that does the
work autonomously, 24/7.
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Crop Monitoring with AI Based Autonomous Farm Rover
IPR — Intellectual Property India · Published 2023
✓ Commercialised by HEXAIND Technologies & Services LLP
↗ View Patent Publication
The Problem
Scale, disease, and missed windows
1.4B
People fed by Indian agriculture
~30%
Annual crop losses from disease
Early
Detection = treatable. Late = lost season
The rover directly addresses the detection window problem — catching disease at early crop growth
stages when treatment is still effective, before it spreads across the field.
System Design
Autonomous patrol to diagnosis pipeline
1
Autonomous Navigation
A Line Tracking algorithm guides the rover along pre-defined paths through the farm,
ensuring complete coverage without GPS dependency.
2
Image Capture & Storage
High-resolution photos of each crop are captured at regular intervals and stored for
both real-time analysis and historical monitoring of plant health trends.
3
CNN Disease Detection
A Convolutional Neural Network trained with Transfer Learning analyses each image for
disease signatures. The model catches subtle visual indicators that are invisible to the human eye at early
stages.
4
Alert & Treatment Recommendation
When disease is detected, the system immediately outputs the disease name and an
effective treatment protocol — fertiliser type, fungicide dosage, application method.
5
Lab Connectivity
The farmer is connected to the nearest agricultural testing facility for cases
requiring soil or physical sample analysis.
Key Features
Beyond detection
◎
Growth Trend Analysis
Tracks plant growth across seasons, identifying anomalies in development patterns
before they become critical.
⟳
Continuous Patrol
Operates autonomously — no farmer intervention required for routine monitoring runs
across the full field.
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Real-time Inference
On-device CNN processing means disease detection happens immediately on the rover,
without cloud round-trips.
✦
Transfer Learning
Leverages pre-trained model weights, enabling high accuracy even with limited
disease-specific training data.
Impact
From patent to commercial product.
This project became a filed and published patent with IPR India, and was subsequently
commercialised by HEXAIND Technologies & Services LLP — validating both the technical approach
and the real-world agricultural need it addresses. It demonstrates that AI-powered precision farming is
accessible and deployable with affordable IoT hardware.