Automatic travelling of agricultural support robot for a fruit farm -Verification of effectiveness of RTK-GNSS and developed simulator for specification design

Abstract

Labour shortages and fatal accidents in agricultural work have recently emerged as critical problems in Japan, necessitating productivity enhancement, workload reduction, and safety assurance. Therefore, in Japan and countries with similar agricultural environments, the use of small and inexpensive agricultural robots that can be used in mountain farms and orchards is desirable. In this study, a dynamic positioning test was performed in orchards in a mountainous region to verify the positioning accuracy and stability of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and real time kinematic (RTK)-GNSS. In addition, a simulator for an agricultural robot that could consider the environmental information of orchards was developed, and driving tests were conducted using the GNSS data acquired in the simulation. The error of the GNSS module was set to be higher than that for the measured value, and robot travelling in the orchard was simulated. The results of GNSS positioning tests in an orchard near a mountainous area indicate that in the specific environmental conditions, the RTK-GNSS and stand-alone (SA)-GNSS can attain a positioning accuracy with an order of tens of centimetres and few metres, respectively. Moreover, the simulation results based on the GNSS positioning results indicate that a vehicle implementing RTK-GNSS and a simple obstacle detection sensor can travel autonomously in a farmyard without colliding with the tree rows. In contrast, a vehicle implementing SA-GNSS and a simple obstacle detection sensor cannot drive autonomously in an orchard and must realise self-positioning using a more accurate sensor. Therefore, the proposed approach of realising simulations of autonomous agricultural robots based on GNSS data from a real orchard can facilitate the evaluation of practical agricultural robots and confirming safety traveling root. The results demonstrate the possibility of development of small agricultural robot for orchards. We conducted the GNSS positioning test in an orchard at an altitude of approximately 830 m, and a similar performance can be expected under similar agricultural situations because the error of the GNSS module was set to be higher than the measured value in driving simulation test.