Design and Test of a Path Tracking Controller to a High Capability Agricultural Vehicle

Abstract

The required crop productivity is growing, due an incremental population size. Also, efficient processes in agriculture are needed to reduce overall cost, without reduce the food quality. Autonomous systems can be applied in the most repetitive and time-consuming farming task, such as weeding and fumigating. However, the autonomy of these types of robots requires a high number of engineering steps from vehicle design to an autonomous vehicle capable to interact in a real farm environment. This work shows the design, implementation and simulation test of a Lyapunov based controller, for path tracking task of an agricultural vehicle. The vehicle is designed to assist farmer's tasks, and capable to carry about 200 Kg of agricultural resources (fertilizer and herbicides). Mathematical modelling, hardware and software scheme also is described. Low level controllers are tested in the real prototype showing good performance, allowing design the next upper level controllers and tested in a Hardware in the Loop scheme in order to navigate into the crops. Finally, some future works are proposed to work toward an autonomous vehicle for assist agriculture task