Agricultural robots are inching closer to becoming practical farm hands, thanks to a new navigation system developed by researchers in Japan. These robots can now autonomously travel between high-bed cultivation rows, like those used for growing strawberries, without relying on expensive infrastructure or perfect positioning systems. Rather than expensive GPS systems or having to install special markers in fields, these robots use a straightforward approach that mimics how humans navigate. They keep a consistent distance from the crop beds while moving, adjusting as they go. When the robot needs to move from one general area to another, it uses waypoint navigation to reach predefined spots. Once it arrives near crop rows, it switches to cultivation bed navigation, where it uses a laser scanner to maintain a specific distance and orientation to the crop bed.
This hybrid approach helps robots move accurately through farm rows, even in places where GPS and other positioning tools don’t work well. Between rows of strawberries, a robot’s sensors detect limited distinctive features, making it hard to know exactly where it is. By using the cultivation beds themselves as guides, the robot can move accurately without perfect self-localization. During testing in both simulated and real-world environments, the system kept the robot within 0.05 meters (about 2 inches) of its target distance from cultivation beds and maintained its orientation within 5 degrees which is impressive precision for agriculture. Testing in virtual environments helped them refine the robot’s specifications and navigation algorithms without wasting time and resources in real fields. This new system was much more efficient than older navigation methods.
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