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Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE A (Applied Physics & Engineering)  2007, Vol. 8 Issue (10): 1596-1603    DOI: 10.1631/jzus.2007.A1596
Electrical & Electronic Engineering     
Path tracking control of autonomous agricultural mobile robots
ZHU Zhong-xiang, CHEN Jun, YOSHIDA Toyofumi, TORISU Ryo, SONG Zheng-he, MAO En-rong
College of Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China; College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China; Faculty of Agriculture, Iwate University, Morioka 0208550, Japan
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Abstract  In a tractor automatic navigation system, path planning plays a significant role in improving operation efficiency. This study aims to create a suboptimal reference course for headland turning of a robot tractor and design a path-tracking controller to guide the robot tractor along the reference course. A time-minimum suboptimal control method was used to generate the reference turning course based on the mechanical parameters of the test tractor. A path-tracking controller consisting of both feedforward and feedback component elements was also proposed. The feedforward component was directly determined by the desired steering angle of the current navigation point on the reference course, whereas the feedback component was derived from the designed optimal controller. Computer simulation and field tests were performed to validate the path-tracking performance. Field test results indicated that the robot tractor followed the reference courses precisely on flat meadow, with average and standard lateral deviations being 0.031 m and 0.086 m, respectively. However, the tracking error increased while operating on sloping meadow due to the employed vehicle kinematic model.

Key wordsHeadland turning      Path creation      Path-tracking controller      Optimal control      Robot tractor     
Received: 17 August 2006     
CLC:  S23  
  TP2  
Cite this article:

ZHU Zhong-xiang, CHEN Jun, YOSHIDA Toyofumi, TORISU Ryo, SONG Zheng-he, MAO En-rong. Path tracking control of autonomous agricultural mobile robots. Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE A (Applied Physics & Engineering), 2007, 8(10): 1596-1603.

URL:

http://www.zjujournals.com/xueshu/zjus-a/10.1631/jzus.2007.A1596     OR     http://www.zjujournals.com/xueshu/zjus-a/Y2007/V8/I10/1596

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