Precise Attitude and Position Determination of the Trailer using a Single Camera System for Agricultural Applications

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The emerging use of GNSS (satellite navigation) is helping farmers to achieve high productivity without making compromise with the quality. Further development of the farming system could improve the contemporary agriculture. It is still possible by improving the precise placement of the seeds, ploughing, and harvesting down to the centimeter level accuracy. The present precise agriculture navigation systems are mostly limited to precise navigation of the main components, like tractors and combine harvesters. In the state of art technique, DGPS (Differential GPS) or RTK (real-time-kinematics) systems and inertial sensors are used to determine the precise relative position and attitude of the main driver. Precise seeding is more complex due to the complexity of the multicomponent machines. Assuring the positioning accuracy of any attached component to a tractor machine would require installation of an additional DGPS or RTK unit, which because of the high cost factor, is not the optimum solution. The approach presented in this paper demonstrates the use of a camera system to measure the precise relative position and, additionally, attitude of the trailer with respect to the tractor. The researched navigation system is suited for a trailer pulled by a tractor. In our test setup, the role of a tractor is perceived by a Volkswagen T5 van and the trailer is demonstrated by commercial cargo trailer. The paper also discusses the various approaches investigated for the development of the algorithm. The reader will have an insight into the challenges related to the attitude determination (van-trailer scenario) with in-depth analysis of the algorithm. The testing environment including testing procedure, results and comparison between attitude measurements using proposed algorithm and multiple DGPS/RTK and geodetic instruments will be discussed in details. The paper will conclude the future possibilities and the extension of the work to make it more precise and reliable to be ready for commercialization.