# ALFRED: Requirement-driven development of an open-source mobile manipulator for long-term plant monitoring

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01477 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.01477/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [FAST-LIO2: Fast Direct LiDAR-inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06829/) (2021)
- [Investigating the Impact of Multi-LiDAR Placement on Object Detection for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00373/) (2021)
- [Attention-driven Next-best-view Planning for Efficient Reconstruction of Plants and Targeted Plant Parts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10274/) (2022)
- [Hefty: A Modular Reconfigurable Robot for Advancing Robot Manipulation in Agriculture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18710/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Tracking seasonal change in crops and forests requires observing the same plants repeatedly. Ground robots can do this at close range, and a manipulator gives their sensors more viewpoints. Yet the robots behind long-term field datasets are rarely released with their design files, and how a robot's own structure limits arm reach and occludes its sensors is seldom compared between builds. We present ALFRED, an open-source mobile manipulator built from commercially available components. It carries a six-degree-of-freedom arm, LiDAR, RGB-D cameras, RTK GNSS and an IMU on an Ackermann-steered base, all mounted on a reconfigurable aluminium strut frame, and runs containerised ROS software. It was developed through four builds against six requirements for repeated outdoor deployment: durability, modularity, repairability, sensing reach, endurance and reproducibility. Model-based analysis of the last three builds shows the usable share of the arm's reachable poses rising from 34.0% to 60.0% and then 66.1%, and ray casting shows that only the final build keeps the frame-mounted LiDAR's horizontal view clear both forwards and backwards. ALFRED completed a year of monthly forest surveys (528 traversals) without missing a scheduled collection. This was despite battery degradation, reconfiguration for another researcher's study, and the parallel development of ALFRED 2.0 for autonomous crop-row operation, with each switch between builds taking about six hours. The deployment also showed that mechanical modularity is only as dependable as the robot description that tracks it.