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Chapter 3
An
An Evaluation
Evaluation of
of Three
Three Different
Different Infield
Infield Navigation
Navigation
Algorithms
Algorithms
Peter Bernad, Peter Lepej,
Peter Bernad, Peter Lepej, Črtomir Rozman,
Črtomir Rozman,
Karmen Pažek and Jurij Rakun
Karmen Pažek Jurij Rakun
Additional
Additional information is available
information is available at
at the
the end
end of
of the
the chapter
chapter
http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.79942
Abstract
In this chapter, we present and evaluate three different infield navigation algorithms,
based on the readings from a LIDAR sensor. All three algorithms are tested on a small
field robot and used to autonomously drive the robot between the two adjacent rows
of maze plants. The first algorithm is the simplest one and just takes distance read-
ings from the left and right side. If robot is not in the center of the mid-row space, it
adjusts its course by turning the robot in the right direction accordingly. The second
approach groups the left and right readings into two vertical lines by using least-square
fit approach. According to the calculated distance and orientation to both lines, it adjusts
the course of the robot. The third approach tries to fit an optimal triangle between the
robot and the plants, revealing the most optimal one. Based on its shape, the course of
the robot is adjusted. All three algorithms are tested in a simulated (ROS stage) and
then in an outdoor (maze test field) environment comparing the optimal line with the
actual calculated position of the robot. The tests prove that all three approaches work
with an error of 0.041 ± 0.034 m for the first algorithm, 0.07 ± 0.059 m for the second, and
0.078 ± 0.055 m error for the third.
Keywords: infield algorithms, navigation algorithms, LIDAR, field robot, ROS
1. Introduction
The usual approach of autonomously driving agriculture machinery trough the field is by
using a precise differential [1] or RTK global positioning systems [2]. In order to work, these
systems require a previously known path of movement that is repeated with each iteration
© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative
Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
32 Agricultural Robots - Fundamentals and Applications
when the crop needs to be treated [3]. This is not always possible, if no prior GPS information
exists, or simply because an accurate GPS system is not always available. So, different systems
should be used in these situations.
A possible solution to solve this is to use cameras to detect plant lines [4] or even stereo
cameras to build a 3D cloud of points [5], describing the plants, and drive the agricultural
machinery to drive between them. Another possible approach is the use of LIDAR systems
[6] that take accurate measurements of the scene, by reading distances from the sensor to the
first obstacle and repeating this for the whole range (usually 270° or 360° in 1°, 0.5° or even
2.25° steps).
With the help of these systems, the machines [7–9] can drive even in an unfamiliar field
where they have not been applied before. They rely on the property of the field and the crops
planted. The plants are in parallel to each other, and the machines can drive between the crop
lines, in mid-row spaces, in order to not damage the plants. This can be done by using differ-
ent approaches/algorithms to guide the machines.
More advance systems using different SLAM methods [10, 11] even build a map of the envi-
ronment and localize the machines in a new environment that is only being discovered.
Based on the map, it then constructs a path using path planner [12] and path follower [13]
to follow the path. These approaches come in use in case of unfamiliar scenes but are not
really necessary in infield situations where prior information regarding the pattern of the
plants is known.
So, the purpose of this work is to first present three different algorithms that could be used
to autonomously drive the machines and to evaluate their accuracy for infield navigation. All
three were implemented as part of robotic operating system (ROS) [14] and applied on a small
field robot, making it autonomous when driving through the field in mid-row spaces. Their
purpose is not to plan and follow the path but to adjust the heading of the machines/robot at
every measured location. The field robot that was used to test the algorithms is presented in
Section 2, along with all three algorithms used, which are then evaluated in Section 3.
2. Materials and methods
The algorithms are tested on a small field robot [16] depicted in Figure 1. It is an electric
driven robot with 50 × 50 cm in size, small enough to fit in 75 cm wide space between two par-
allel lines of maze plants. It has four in-wheel BLDC motors capable of delivering 200 W max
peak power, equipped with four additional motors to individually turn each of the wheels,
making possible to drive in different steering modes like skid steer or Ackermann. Besides the
odometry from the wheels, the robot is equipped with three different additional sensors: two
digital cameras, an IMU unit, and a LIDAR sensor. The data from the sensors are processed by
two onboard computers, a low-level computer build around Raspberry PI 3B and Intel NUC
i7 (gen. 7) computer, used as high-level processing unit. The two units run a Linux-based
distribution with robotic (meta) operating system (ROS) on top, configured in multimachine
mode to split the essential processing from time consuming, advance algorithms, making the
robot as responsive as possible.
An Evaluation of Three Different Infield Navigation Algorithms 33
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Figure 1. A small field robot FarmBeast while performing Task 1—Basic navigation at Field Robot Event 2018.
If the robot, as the one in Figure 1, has to drive autonomously through the crop fields, it must
have a navigation algorithm. The navigation algorithm relies on the distance measurements
from the LIDAR sensor. The experimental robot is equipped with the SICK TIM310 LIDAR,
with a 270° area at a 1° angular resolution. It detects obstacles up to 4 m away and then
chooses the optimal path based on the readings. Once the robot reaches the end of the crop
line, it uses data from the on-board compass (IMU unit) and turns in the next row.
In this chapter, we investigate the accuracy of three different navigation algorithms and com-
pare them, with left and right row distance as a reference for optimal path that should be in
the middle of the rows and with as little oscillations as possible.
2.1. Minimal row offset-based algorithm
The first algorithm is the simplest one. It takes 30 readings from left and 30 from right side,
as shown in Figure 2.
From these two sets, it first eliminates ones that are too far away, that is more than 0.75 cm
and belong to the other crop lines, and then calculates an average distance value for each side.
These average distances can be written as dr and dl for right and left side, respectively. These
two are then used to calculate an offset, as shown in Eq. 1:
Offset = (dr − dl) (1)
The value of the offset is then used to adjust the course of the robot, if necessary, as shown in
Eq. 2.
Orientation = Offset / (dr + dl) (2)
So, the current course of the robot is adjusted by the new value orientation which also cor-
responds directly how much the wheels should turn in radians.
34 Agricultural Robots - Fundamentals and Applications
2.2. Least-square fit approach algorithm
This second algorithm was designed to navigate the robot between two walls that are paral-
lel to each other, this being either an artificial barrier, e.g., walls, or real crop lines, such as
maze plants. The overview of the approach is depicted in Figure 3, explaining each sensing—
adjustment cycle.
(A) The sensor reads the data—the distances between the sensor and the obstacles for each
degree—and triggers a callback function each time it completes the measuring sequence.
(B) The callback function first filters the data depending on the distance readings. The points
that are too far away and points that are too near to count are discarded. The algorithm makes
possible to set how many points should be included for each count for each side that cor-
responds to how many degrees will use in the subsequent steps of the algorithm. The useful
readings are stored in two data sets, one for left and one for right side.
Figure 2. Robot standing in the middle of the row. Each double-sided arrow represents a measurement of the sensor,
where the actual number of reading is 30 on each side. The sensor returns the distance for each degree it measures.
Figure 3. Performed steps in each cycle.
An Evaluation of Three Different Infield Navigation Algorithms 35
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(C) In the third step, a linear fit is used, for which a least squares method [17] was chosen.
This way the slope and y-intercept of a linear equation describing each set for each side is
calculated.
The least squares method allows us to linearly fit the measurements with a smaller number of
heavy duty mathematical operations. For this, we need to define some additional parameters
with which we then calculate the slope and y-intercept of each line:
xsum − sum of all the distances taken for the line,
xsquare sum − sum of all the squared distances taken for the line,
ysum − sum of all the angles taken for the line (in degrees),
ysquare sum − sum of all the squared angles taken for the line (in degrees),
yxsum − sum of the products of the angle and distance of each point.
Once these parameters are known, the slope (k) and y-intercept (n) can easily be calculated as
shown in Eqs. 3 and 4:
number of points ∗ yx −x ∗y
k = _________________________________
sum
number of elements ∗ x
sum sum
− x2
(3)
square sum sum
xsquare sum ∗ ysum − xsum ∗ yxsum
n = ______________________________
number of elements ∗ x − x2
(4)
square sum sum
(D) With the calculated slopes and y-intercepts, a crossing point is calculated where those two
lines cross each other. This is the point, which depends on the rotation of the robot and its
position between the two walls.
Based on step (C), with calculated slope and intercept for each side, the following parameters
are defined:
kL—slope of the left side,
nL—y intercept of the left side,
kD—slope of the right side,
nD—y intercept of the right side.
and distances xL and yL can be calculated using Eqs. (5) and (6):
n −n
xL = _____
2
k −k
1
(5)
1 2
yL = k1 ∗ xL + n1 (6)
36 Agricultural Robots - Fundamentals and Applications
(E) Once the information about the intersection from the two lines is known, the position of the
robot is calculated. The distance yL stays constant, if the robot is aligned up with the row no mat-
ter which wall it is closer. The xL describes how far away it is from both of walls/lines. With just
looking at the two distances, the problem is simplified and can be solved with Eqs. (1) and (2).
Based on the position of the robot, the described approach can describe two different situa-
tions. The first situation is when the robot is in the right location, as shown in Figure 4, and
the second if the robot is not in the right location and needs adjustment, as shown in Figure 5.
In both cases, the parameters of the two linear equations and the distance to the path of the
robot are used.
Since the walls are always apart from each other with a constant width, the triangle covers
the same surface. What changes is the orientation and position changes with the robot that
produces different triangles. If the robot is not aligned in parallel to the walls or crop lines, an
asymmetric triangle is constructed, as the one in Figure 5.
2.3. Triangle-based navigation algorithm
The third approach [15] of finding an optimal path for the robot consists out of multiple steps.
As shown in Figure 6, the algorithm uses trigonometric functions to calculate the distance of
a segment between every two sequential points from LIDAR sensor. The segment distance
must be wide enough to drive the robot trough, and if they do not meet the criteria, they are
disposed. This is depicted in Figure 6 where red colored segment distances written as (d1, d5,
d6, d8, d9, and d13) are disposed and green colored distances (d2, d3, d4, d7, d10, d11, and d12) are
retained for further procedure.
Figure 4. Arranged distances (blue) depicted on a graph that correspond to the length and the degree, it is located on.
The red dotted line shows the two lines that are created out of these measurements. The green circle represents where
the lines meet. This way a triangle is calculate and its shape depends on the position of the robot.
An Evaluation of Three Different Infield Navigation Algorithms 37
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Figure 5. This picture shows us what we can get from the position of the intersection of the lines (distance y L and x L).
We can figure out the position and the rotation of the robot with the two lengths.
Figure 6. The way the robot calculates each segment of distances between every two sequential points from LIDAR
sensor.
38 Agricultural Robots - Fundamentals and Applications
Figure 7. The procedure eliminates inappropriate solutions.
Figure 8. Calculating front wheels turn angle δ.
An Evaluation of Three Different Infield Navigation Algorithms 39
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Figure 6 shows that only segment d7 is appropriate for robot to drive trough. The procedure
eliminates inappropriate segments as shown in Figure 7. Algorithm calculates the angles: α,
β, and γ in triangle limited between two sequential points and LIDAR sensor. If any of the
angles α or β is bigger than predefined threshold, set to 100° or more, which would produce
a triangle that would not fit in field situations, the segment is disposed. Disposed segments
are marked with red triangle in Figure 7, and the optimal segment d7 which pass the criteria
is marked as green triangle.
When the optimal segment is determined, the algorithm calculates the angle for the front
wheels to turn. The midpoint of optimal segment is calculated for robot to drive to. Angle δ in
Figure 8 represents the angle for robot to turn front wheels to follow the midpoint of optimal
segment.
3. Results
In order to test and compare all three algorithms from Section 2, two separate approaches are
used. In the first, a simulated environment is built to test all three using precisely the same
data sets in order to verify if they work. In the second approach, a real testing environment is
used in order to evaluate the approaches in uncontrolled environment.
In contrast to the first experiment, where the algorithms were tested one time, the robot in the
second approach is tested using one of three algorithms and repeated five times, for example,
it drives between the two rows five times, in order to calculate an average absolute value with
its standard deviation. The average value is computed for all three algorithms and evaluated
as the average displacement from the center point and its standard deviation. The algorithm
that preforms best should have the average closest to the real middle point, with as little
deviation as possible, corresponding to a minimal oscillation pattern. Figure 9 depicts an
exaugurated principle of how the robot moves. The oscillation pattern is of course small and
neglectable with some algorithms.
3.1. Simulated environment
A simulated environment was build using ROS stage simulator [18] in order to test all three
algorithms before the application in real environment. In this experiment, all tests start at
the same starting point, and the robot moves in semi-parallel direction to two artificial walls,
mimicking two plant rows (Figure 10).
3.2. Real environment
In the second experiment, the robot moves between two plant rows. In this experiment, the
data sets are not precisely the same as the plants can move due to wind. Even in no wind
situation, the data sets might differ due to quantization steps of the LIDAR that might not
be at the same location each time. Figure 11 depicts the environment used in this approach.
Figure 12 depicts an example of how the both corn rows are sensed using a LIDAR sensor
with readings depicted as colored dots.
40 Agricultural Robots - Fundamentals and Applications
Figure 9. An example how the robot moves with the simplest algorithm. The movement is depicted with red line, the
optimal mid-row path with blue, and the plants with green markers.
Figure 10. A screenshot of the simulation environment STAGE used in this test.
The results of the second test are presented in Table 1, where in each iteration, the average
distance from the mid-row path was calculated on 8 m long test runs, but this time using real
plants in real environment.
An Evaluation of Three Different Infield Navigation Algorithms 41
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Figure 11. An environment with real plants with 8 m in length and 0.75 m in width.
Figure 12. The environment from Figure 12 seen by LIDAR sensor mounted on the front of the robot. The dots at the
bottom center of the robot represent the wheels of the robot and are filtered out.
The results in Table 1 show that the best performing algorithm is the algorithm from Section
2.1 with an error of 0.041 ± 0.034 m, and the second and third are very close with an average
error of 0.07 ± 0.059 m for the second from Section 2.2 and 0.078 ± 0.055 m error for the third
from Section 2.3. It should be noted that all three performed well reaching the end of each row
without any problems. The difference between the first and other two is that the first uses the
values in small proximity to the sensor on either side, but the second and third use a bigger
range on both sides making them more useful in situations when rows are not straight as in
42 Agricultural Robots - Fundamentals and Applications
Iteration Algorithm 2.1 Algorithm 2.2 Algorithm 2.3
First 0.04 ± 0.035 m 0.082 ± 0.06 m 0.069 ± 0.049 m
Second 0.038 ± 0.03 m 0.063 ± 0.049 m 0.071 ± 0.045 m
Third 0.045 ± 0.037 m 0.077 ± 0.073 m 0.073 ± 0.053 m
Fourth 0.039 ± 0.03 m 0.063 ± 0.044 m 0.07 ± 0.052 m
Fifth 0.042 ± 0.036 m 0.065 ± 0.056 m 0.099 ± 0.065 m
AVERAGE: 0.041 ± 0.034 m 0.07 ± 0.059 m 0.078 ± 0.055 m
Table 1. A performance comparison of three different algorithms from Section 2 using a real environment.
this experiment. The scenario in which the first algorithm might fail is in situation where the
corn plants are bigger and the leaves from the corn over leap the mid-row space, obstructing
a clear view for the sensor. In this case, the algorithms from Section 2.2 and 2.3 would be more
efficient due to higher robustness in comparison to the first algorithm.
4. Conclusion
In this chapter, we presented three different algorithms for infield navigation and then tested
them using first a simulated environment and, second, evaluated them in a real environment.
The results from Section 3 show that all three algorithms perform good, with the best one in
terms of optimal mid-row driving and minimal oscillation, the algorithm from Section 2.1
with an error of 0.041 ± 0.034 m, the second being algorithm from Section 2.2 with an error
of 0.07 ± 0.059 m, and third, the algorithm from Section 2.3 with an error of 0.078 ± 0.055 m.
The algorithms presented in this chapter adjust the movement of the robot according to each
iteration of measured distance sets recorded by LIDAR sensor. As a logical improvement to
the best performing algorithms from Section 2, the accuracy could be improved by taking into
account the measurements further away from the robot, measurements of the parallel lines,
that are currently filtered out, as well as measurements of the previously driven row(s), as the
rows are always in parallel to each other in which we get a prior information for the current
rows. All this would further improve the performance of the algorithms.
Author details
Peter Bernad1, Peter Lepej3, Črtomir Rozman2, Karmen Pažek2 and Jurij Rakun2*
1 Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor, Hoče, Slovenia
2 Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Maribor, Hoče, Slovenia
3 Vistion d.o.o., Slovenska Bistrica, Slovenia
An Evaluation of Three Different Infield Navigation Algorithms 43
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