Abstract
The objective of this study was to develop a small-sized and low-cost unit to provide attitude measurements for lightloaded, small-sized and cost effective agricultural robot application. The attitude measurement unit comprised an electronic control unit (ECU) and a gyroscope and an accelerometer within a small-sized and low-cost IMU. In order to avoid the measurement limitations of a single sensor, a self-adaptive complementary filter and a Kalman filter were discussed and compared for sensor fusion. By comparison, in respect of preventing angle drift and maintaining dynamic characteristics, the Kalman filter has the significant advantage, especially in dynamic motion. In the comparison with a highly precise aviation-level fiber optic gyroscope (FOG), the results showed that the static angle drift was restrained by Kalman filter which reached the performance of the FOG. And in the series of farm experiments, the dynamic characteristic of the developed attitude measurement unit is close to the FOG performance in the sub-degree level. This is an acceptable accuracy for light-loaded, small-sized and cost effective agricultural robot application such as agriculture drone, greenhouse robots, harvesting robot arm and so on.
Highlights
The role of robotics in precision agriculture (PA) is becoming more and more important with the development of electronic technology
A small-sized and low-cost electronic unit was developed to provide attitude estimation with acceptable accuracy for light-loaded, small-sized and low-priced agricultural robot applications. This attitude measurement unit was composed of a small, low-cost inertial measurement unit (IMU) and an electronic control unit (ECU) by using sensor fusion methods
In the comparison with a highly precise fiber optic gyroscope (FOG), the drift of attitude measurement unit approximates to the performance of the FOG
Summary
The role of robotics in precision agriculture (PA) is becoming more and more important with the development of electronic technology. A global positioning system (GPS) has recently been used extensively in autonomous navigation for providing position information. Attitude sensors such as a geomagnetic direction sensor (GDS), FOG and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) can be utilized to correct the GPS position information. There have been a considerable number of studies on application of GPS with attitude sensors (Kise et al 2001; Noguchi et al 2001; Inoue et al 2009). More attention is being given to small-sized smart agricultural machines (Robinson 2012). In order to keep the soil loose, there is a need to develop light-weight, small-sized, low-power and low-cost systems for agricultural robotic applications. The development of a small-sized and low-cost attitude measurement system is necessary
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