Preliminary Results of the Development of a Single-Frequency GNSS RTK-Based Autonomous Driving System for a Speed Sprayer

Abstract

The speed sprayer plays an important role in fruit orchards as it undertakes spraying to prevent damage by blight and harmful insects. Although farmers who use speed sprayers wear protective devices, pesticide poisoning incidents and damage can occur when pesticides penetrate the skin. In addition, skilled manpower in agriculture is decreasing due to aging populations in farming villages. To overcome these problems, we aim to develop an autonomous driving system using a single-frequency GNSS RTK for commercialization of an autonomous driving speed sprayer. Therefore, in this study, path generation and a tracking system based on the single-frequency GNSS RTK are developed and the preliminary results of tests of this system are analyzed. The field test of the developed system showed positional accuracy of 0.01 m.

Performance Evaluation of an Autonomously Driven Agricultural Vehicle in an Orchard Environment

“…Alonso-Garcia et al [ 9 ] evaluated the performance of autonomously guided agricultural tractors using low-cost GPS receivers, and the total guidance error was lower than 1.25 m in 75% of the desired trajectories. Han et al [ 10 ] developed a single-frequency GNSS RTK-based autonomous driving system, and its performance while driving autonomously on a parking lot was evaluated to have centimeter-level accuracy in path-following.…”

Performance Evaluation of Autonomous Driving Control Algorithm for a Crawler-Type Agricultural Vehicle Based on Low-Cost Multi-Sensor Fusion Positioning

“…The acceptance radius for switching waypoints and the radius for searching a target point were set to 0.4 and 2 m, respectively. The data for generating waypoints was acquired by manually driving a vehicle using a wireless remote controller based on the path-generation algorithm that was developed by [11]. The shape of test paths was defined based on the shape of working paths for the agricultural vehicle, such as a speed sprayer and a weeding vehicle, to which autonomous driving will be applied.…”

“…For example, major agricultural machinery manufacturers, such as John Deere, Case IH, Yanmar, and New Holland, developed autonomous driving technology or have a concept/plan to carry it out, and more than 20 of the projects are underway across the world [2,3]. John Deere presented an autonomous tractor, the 8320 [9] GNSS-RTK Automatic steering system 2.5-6.9 cm Germany Gan-Mor et al [10] GNSS-RTK tractor Centimeters Israel Han et al [11] single-frequency GNSS-RTK speed sprayer Centimeters Korea Noguchi et al [13] GNSS-RTK, a fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) and an IMU autonomous driving robot 3 cm Japan Takai et al [14] GNSS-RTK and an IMU crawler-type tractor 5 cm Japan Xiang et al [15] GNSS-RTK and IMU rice transplanter Less than 10 cm China Recently, advances in micro electromechanical system (MEMS) technology have led to the development of a small and inexpensive MEMS-IMU, and the performance of the MEMS-IMU is being improved [16]. In addition, the performance of a low-cost GNSS-RTK module is improving due to advances in the multi-GNSS positioning technique using GPS, a global navigation satellite system (GLONASS), BeiDou, Galileo, and a quasi-zenith satellite system (QZSS).…”

Design and implementation of DC linear actuator and stepper motor for remote control of the driverless tractor robot

“…This research can be supervised by a remote area using a low-cost DC actuator instead of the muscles, arms, and legs of the human being to control a driverless tractor robot. The driverless robotic tractors to be deployed will benefit farmers to work more conveniently and reduce work time, especially if agricultural chemicals are sprayed [6], [7] that are harmful to health if without wearable equipment to prevent toxic chemicals from spraying.…”