ABSTRACT
This research is aimed at the design and implementation of a Bluetooth controlled planter robot. It involved a mechanical design, a Bluetooth control design, an implementation of prototype and environmental behaviour modelling as well as validation of the robot's model. The design was optimized for planting maize as a case study in Zaria. In the mechanical design section, several aspects, starting from selection of dimensions, materials to production of complete engineering drawings were presented and the Plantbot was constructed using the engineering drawings of the robot. In the design of the Bluetooth control segment, detailed procedure from selection of Bluetooth module to design of microcontroller relay driver were presented. The designed Bluetooth control system was then interfaced with the mechanical part and the Plantbot was tested. The average speed of the Plantbot obtained from the experiments was 30.70cm/s which is 85.26% of the designed value (36cm/s). The depth of seed planting was 3cm which agreed with the recommended 2 - 3cm by Institute of Agricultural Research of Ahmadu Bello University-Zaria (2012). The percentage of successful planting was 89.8% and percentage of successful planting of two seeds per hole was 86.6%. The effective range of the Bluetooth control was 57.61m (189.013 feet) i.e. 94% of design range. The MATLAB was used as system identification toolbox to develop the environmental behaviour model of the Plantbot. The linear model of the ARX structure (i.e. arx411) obtained showed the best fit of 83.47%. A transfer function relating the speed of the Plantbot with the soil moisture content was then developed.