Multi-sensor guidance of an agricultural robot

The increasing demand for high-density soil data, and the high labor cost associated with manual methods, have encouraged the development of autonomous alternatives. In this study, a mobile robot named ‘AgTracker’ was developed as a platform for an autonomous soil sampling machine. The robot, equipped with a low-accuracy GPS, a LIDAR scanner, an electronic compass visited human-defined locations through its auto-navigation system. This system also had a user-friendly interface, which enabled operators to set waypoints by clicking on Google Maps®. Locations could also be remotely monitored in real time through this interface. An Xbee wireless network was built to make the remote waypoints set up and monitoring possible. The robot was tested on campus of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It could visit waypoints one by one successfully in most cases. The robot’s localization errors, which were the distances between its true visited locations and set waypoints, were evaluated. An average error within 0.2 m was achieved.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Agricultural & Biological Engr

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Gan, Hao

• Guidance
• Robot
• Automation

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2015 Hao Gan

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/78645

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F78645