2025/06/12 by Nidhi Parayil, Parayil, Nidhi Homey, Thierry Peynot +3
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Engineering · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Robotics (cs.RO) #Smart Agriculture and AI #Soft Robotics and Applications #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #Tree Root and Stability Studies #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.10383
openalex publication_date 2025/06/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Robotic navigation in dense, cluttered environments such as agricultural canopies presents significant challenges due to physical and visual occlusion caused by leaves and branches. Traditional vision-based or model-dependent approaches often fail in these settings, where physical interaction without damaging foliage and branches is necessary to reach a target. We present a novel reactive controller that enables safe navigation for a robotic arm in a contact-rich, cluttered, deformable environment using end-effector position and real-time tactile feedback. Our proposed framework's interaction strategy is based on a trade-off between minimizing disturbance by maneuvering around obstacles and pushing through them to move towards the target. We show that over 35 trials in 3 experimental plant setups with an occluded target, the proposed controller successfully reached the target in all trials without breaking any branch and outperformed the state-of-the-art model-free controller in robustness and adaptability. This work lays the foundation for safe, adaptive interaction in cluttered, contact-rich deformable environments, enabling future agricultural tasks such as pruning and harvesting in plant canopies.