Development and evaluation of an integrated navigation system for inter-row operations

Abstract

Simultaneous to industrial automation, automating agricultural tasks would be affordable for efficiency improvement. To obtain an applicable fully automatic vehicle in the straight rows and headland turning, an autonomous system was developed and evaluated in three different modes. The study was implemented on actual sized, renewable energy based off-road vehicle (SAPHT). Experimental evaluations were conducted based on machine vision and teleoperation modes with various speeds. The vehicle also was driven manually for comparison. RMSE analysis in the straight path illustrated the prominence of vision based guidance (10.09 cm). While in the curved test track, teleoperational navigation gives good results (12.84 cm). However for an accurate navigation, combination of two evaluated methods would be recommended: between crop rows that line is detectable, vision system could handle accurately, while in headland, teleoperational control would navigate precisely.