  This paper presents a modular, reconfigurable robot platform for robot
manipulation in agriculture. While robot manipulation promises great
advancements in automating challenging, complex tasks that are currently best
left to humans, it is also an expensive capital investment for researchers and
users because it demands significantly varying robot configurations depending
on the task. Modular robots provide a way to obtain multiple configurations and
reduce costs by enabling incremental acquisition of only the necessary modules.
The robot we present, Hefty, is designed to be modular and reconfigurable. It
is designed for both researchers and end-users as a means to improve technology
transfer from research to real-world application. This paper provides a
detailed design and integration process, outlining the critical design
decisions that enable modularity in the mobility of the robot as well as its
sensor payload, power systems, computing, and fixture mounting. We demonstrate
the utility of the robot by presenting five configurations used in multiple
real-world agricultural robotics applications.
