Abstract
Severe working conditions, the cost reduction need and production growth justify the adoption of technological techniques in agricultural production. Currently, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) based navigation systems are very popular in agriculture. However, relying only on GNSS data and the availability of crop maps that also need to be updated may become a problem. One may face lack of GNSS satellite signal during the path and the navigation system may fail. As an alternative, this paper presents the modeling, development and validation of a reactive navigation system for agricultural fields based on a frontal light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor and a H∞ robust controller. A small-scale mobile robot (Helvis3) was used to validate the controllers and carry out experiments in both controlled and farm scenarios. According to the experimental results, the proposed navigation system is capable of controlling the robot displacement between crop rows, keeping it in the middle of the corresponding path with minimum error, despite environmental disturbances.
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Acknowledgements
Authors would like to thank CAPES, CNPq, COLCIENCIAS, EMBRAPA Instrumentation and CEPOF (Sao Paulo Research Foundation – FAPESP - Grant Number 2013/07276-1) for the financial support and the scholarships for the students. Also, authors would like to thank Mr. José Risardi, Engineer Juan Fajardo and Msc. Andrés Jutinico for all technical support during the development of this work. Finally, Andres Eduardo Baquero Velasquez was supported by Coordination of Superior Level Staff Improvement, Brazil (CAPES), Finance Code 001. Vitor Akihiro Hisano Higuti and Mateus Valverde Gasparino were supported by FAPESP Grant Numbers 2016/09970-0 and 2017/10401-3, respectively.
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Velasquez, A.E.B., Higuti, V.A.H., Guerrero, H.B. et al. Reactive navigation system based on H∞ control system and LiDAR readings on corn crops. Precision Agric 21, 349–368 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11119-019-09672-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11119-019-09672-8