Metric Map Generation for Autonomous Field Operations

Zhou, Kun; Jensen, Allan Leck; Bochtis, Dionysis; Nørremark, Michael; Kateris, Dimitrios; Sørensen, Claus Aage Grøn

doi:10.3390/agronomy10010083

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In many cases, it is an all-in-one system, including GNSS receiver and monitor, while it is sometimes a more complex system consisting of a GNSS receiver, monitor, actuator, controller for spatially variable rate crop input application, etc. [19][20][21][22]. A low-cost solution available online for building up a homemade automatic guidance system is offered by AgOpenGPS project, which provides the outlines and designs of the hardware to be developed, as well as the software that is distributed together with GNU (General Public) license.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Positioning Accuracy Comparison of GNSS Receivers Used for Mapping and Guidance of Agricultural Machines

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) allow the determination of the 3D position of a point on the Earth’s surface by measuring the distance from the receiver antenna to the orbital position of at least four satellites. Selecting and buying a GNSS receiver, depending on farm needs, is the first step for implementing precision agriculture. The aim of this work is to compare the positioning accuracy of four GNSS receivers, different for technical features and working modes: L1/L2 frequency survey-grade Real-Time Kinematic (RTK)-capable Stonex S7-G (S7); L1 frequency RTK-capable Stonex S5 (S5); L1 frequency Thales MobileMapper Pro (TMMP); low-cost L1 frequency Quanum GPS Logger V2 (QLV2). In order to evaluate the positioning accuracy of these receivers, i.e., the distance of the determined points from a reference trajectory, different tests, distinguished by the use or not of Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) differential correction data and/or an external antenna, were carried out. The results show that all satellite receivers tested carried out with the external antenna had an improvement in positioning accuracy. The Thales MobileMapper Pro satellite receiver showed the worst positioning accuracy. The low-cost Quanum GPS Logger V2 receiver surprisingly showed an average positioning error of only 0.550 m. The positioning accuracy of the above-mentioned receiver was slightly worse than that obtained using Stonex S7-G without the external antenna and differential correction (maximum positioning error 0.749 m). However, this accuracy was even better than that recorded using Stonex S5 without differential correction, both with and without the external antenna (average positioning error of 0.962 m and 1.368 m).

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Positioning Accuracy Comparison of GNSS Receivers Used for Mapping and Guidance of Agricultural Machines

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Equations ( 5) and ( 6) ensure that each route should be started and finished at a depot. Equation (7) specifies that the total summation of demand related to each trip should not exceed the capacity of the distributor's tank. Equation ( 8) represents that if the vehicle starts covering a track K, it will leave the track at the end of the process.…”

Section: Mathematical Formulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, more efforts are being contributed to the development of advanced information and communication technology (ICT) systems and operation management tools to achieve higher operational efficiency and machinery productivity [4]. These tools/systems have been developed ranging from aiding and supporting navigation efforts to full autosteering systems [5][6][7][8]. Most of these systems can navigate and supervise the operator to complete the field tasks by setting the route for a vehicle either manually or using a predefined fieldwork pattern.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Route Planning for Agricultural Machines with Multiple Depots: Manure Application Case Study

Vahdanjoo

Zhou²,

Sørensen

2020

Agronomy

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Capacitated field operations involve input/output material flows where there are capacity constraints in the form of a specific load that a vehicle can carry. As such, a specific normal-sized field cannot be covered in one single operation using only one load, and the vehicle needs to get serviced (i.e., refilling) from out-of-field facilities (depot). Although several algorithms have been developed to solve the routing problem of capacitated operations, these algorithms only considered one depot. The general goal of this paper is to develop a route planning tool for agricultural machines with multiple depots. The tool presented consists of two modules: the first one regards the field geometrical representation in which the field is partitioned into tracks and headland passes; the second one regards route optimization that is implemented by the metaheuristic simulated annealing (SA) algorithm. In order to validate the developed tool, a comparison between a well-known route planning approach, namely B-pattern, and the algorithm presented in this study was carried out. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the B-pattern by up to 20.0% in terms of traveled nonworking distance. The applicability of the tool developed was tested in a case study with seven scenarios differing in terms of locations and number of depots. The results of this study illustrated that the location and number of depots significantly affect the total nonworking traversal distance during a field operation.

show abstract

“…A path-planning problem in the agricultural domain is the derivation of a pre-determined trajectory which can be used to steer the movements of autonomous agricultural machinery [7]. A significant amount of research has been dedicated to the development of advanced algorithms for path planning in arable farming [8]. For example, Han, et al [9], proposed an Adaptive Elite Differential Evolution (AEDE) algorithm, which is suitable for multi-tractor path optimization, and can reduce the total turning time and the total operating time of the vehicle.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficiency-Oriented MPC Algorithm for Path Tracking in Autonomous Agricultural Machinery

Lai

Guo

et al. 2022

Agronomy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Path-tracking control algorithms in agriculture typically focus on how to improve the trajectory-tracking performance of autonomous agricultural machinery, and the agricultural productivity is optimized in a two-layer way. The upper operational layer optimizes an optimal tracking trajectory with the best agricultural productivity, and the lower control layer—such as Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC)—receives this optimized tracking trajectory first, and then steers the vehicle to track this trajectory with high accuracy. However, this two-layer structure cannot improve the agricultural productivity at the control layer online, which makes the agricultural operation sub-optimal. In this paper, we focus on agricultural machinery operational efficiency, to represent agricultural productivity; in order to realize optimizing control to further improve agricultural machinery operational efficiency, a new path-tracking control algorithm, named Efficiency-oriented Model Predictive Control (EfiMPC), is proposed. EfiMPC is intrinsically a nested structure, which can consider the global performance of the whole system defined in the operational layer—like the agricultural machinery operational efficiency considered in this paper—in the control layer online; thus, the agricultural machinery operational efficiency can be improved during the farming operation. An unreachable tracking point, denoted as the pseudo-point, has been proposed, to indicate the agricultural machinery operational efficiency objective in a receding horizon fashion; EfiMPC can utilize this pseudo-point to realize the optimizing control online. A simulation case study was used to test the superiority of the proposed EfiMPC algorithm, and the results show that, compared with the traditional NMPC algorithm, the agricultural machinery operational efficiency realized by EfiMPC was improved by 8.56%; thus, the effectiveness of the EfiMPC has been demonstrated.

show abstract

Metric Map Generation for Autonomous Field Operations

Cited by 11 publications

References 22 publications

Positioning Accuracy Comparison of GNSS Receivers Used for Mapping and Guidance of Agricultural Machines

Positioning Accuracy Comparison of GNSS Receivers Used for Mapping and Guidance of Agricultural Machines

Route Planning for Agricultural Machines with Multiple Depots: Manure Application Case Study

Efficiency-Oriented MPC Algorithm for Path Tracking in Autonomous Agricultural Machinery

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About