Algebraic path tracking to aid the manual harvesting of olives using an automated service unit

FERNANDO AUAT CHEEIN; SCAGLIA, G.; MIGUEL TORRES-TORRITI; JOS
E GUIVANT; ALVARO JAVIER PRADO; JAUME ARNO; ALEXANDRE ESCOLA; JOAN R. ROSELL-POLO

BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING

ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2016 vol. 142 p. 117 - 132

1537-5110

Service units used in precision agriculture are able to improve processes such as harvesting,sowing, agrochemical application, and manure spreading. This two-part workpresents, a path tracking controller based on an algebraic approach for an articulatedservice unit, suitable for embedded applications, and its implementation to a hierarchicalnavigation strategy to aid a manual harvesting process. The path tracking controllerapproach can be scaled to several trailers attached to the service unit. For harvesting, theservice unit drives within an olive grove environment following the previously developedpath and a trailer is used as a mobile hopper where olives, collected by human labour, aredeposited. The service unit also registers and geo-references the amount of olives (mass)collected for the subsequent creation of yield maps. The developed navigation strategyimproved the time associated with harvesting olives by approximately 42e45%. Themathematical formulation of the problem, some real time experimental results, the creationof a yield map and the statistical analysis that validated the method are included.