Development of a Robotic Platform with Autonomous Navigation System for Agriculture

The development of autonomous agricultural robots using a global navigation satellite system aided by real-time kinematics and an inertial measurement unit for position and orientation determination must address the accuracy, reliability, and cost of these components. This study aims to develop and evaluate a robotic platform with autonomous navigation using low-cost components. A navigation algorithm was developed based on the kinematics of a differential vehicle, combined with a proportional and integral steering controller that followed a point-to-point route until the desired route was completed. Two route mapping methods were tested. The performance of the platform control algorithm was evaluated by following a predefined route and calculating metrics such as the maximum cross-track error, mean absolute error, standard deviation of the error, and root mean squared error. The strategy of planning routes with closer waypoints reduces cross-track errors. The results showed that when adopting waypoints every 3 m, better performance was obtained compared to waypoints only at the vertices, with maximum cross-track error being 44.4% lower, MAE 64.1% lower, SD 39.4% lower, and RMSE 52.5% lower. This study demonstrates the feasibility of developing autonomous agricultural robots with low-cost components and highlights the importance of careful route planning to optimize navigation accuracy.