Autonomous and Safe Navigation of Mobile Robots in Vineyard with Smooth Collision Avoidance

Abhijeet Ravankar,Ankit A Ravankar,Yohei Hoshino,Arpit Rawankar

doi:10.3390/agriculture11100954

Abhijeet Ravankar, Ankit A Ravankar + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11100954

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Journal: Agriculture	Publication Date: Sep 30, 2021
Citations: 17	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Kitami Institute of Technology, Tohoku University

Abstract

In recent years, autonomous robots have extensively been used to automate several vineyard tasks. Autonomous navigation is an indispensable component of such field robots. Autonomous and safe navigation has been well studied in indoor environments and many algorithms have been proposed. However, unlike structured indoor environments, vineyards pose special challenges for robot navigation. Particularly, safe robot navigation is crucial to avoid damaging the grapes. In this regard, we propose an algorithm that enables autonomous and safe robot navigation in vineyards. The proposed algorithm relies on data from a Lidar sensor and does not require a GPS. In addition, the proposed algorithm can avoid dynamic obstacles in the vineyard while smoothing the robot’s trajectories. The curvature of the trajectories can be controlled, keeping a safe distance from both the crop and the dynamic obstacles. We have tested the algorithm in both a simulation and with robots in an actual vineyard. The results show that the robot can safely navigate the lanes of the vineyard and smoothly avoid dynamic obstacles such as moving people without abruptly stopping or executing sharp turns. The algorithm performs in real-time and can easily be integrated into robots deployed in vineyards.

Highlights

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Autonomous robots have extensively been used to lower the burden of farmers
It should be noted that all of these works implicitly depend on the navigation module of a mobile robot

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Managing the irrigation in vineyards has been studied in [14] In all these works, autonomous safe navigation is assumed to be available with the robot and algorithms have been proposed [15]. It should be noted that all of these works implicitly depend on the navigation module of a mobile robot Tasks such as vineyard monitoring [23,25,26,27]. A path planning module is required to move the robot while avoiding obstacles to appropriate areas of the vineyard that need harvesting. The recorded images are labeled by area and pillar numbers for the farmer to monitor specific areas of the vineyard This inherently depends on a reliable navigation module. The proposed work uses a straightforward method of pillar and obstacle detection using a Lidar sensor.

Pillar Detection from Lidar Sensor Data

Obstacle Avoidance with Path Smoothing

Experiment and Results

Conclusions