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CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

"Design of an autonomous agricultural vehicle"

for the degree of Master of Philosophy.

If you download this thesis, please send a short email to us with 'Klaus Ellenrieder thesis' as the subject, as we would like to know which other groups are working in this area

Table of Contents

Abstract I

Acknowledgements II

1. Introduction 1

2. Guidance Systems for Agricultural Vehicles 2

2.1 Indirect Guidance Systems 2

2.2 Direct Vehicle Guidance 3

Table 2.1 Overview and judgment of guiding systems in agriculture

3. Artificial Intelligence 7

3.1 Definition and Introduction 7

3.2 Applications of AI 7

3.3 Elements of an AI System 9

4. The Path Planning of Autonomous Mobile Robot Systems 12

4.1 Autonomous Mobile Robot Systems 12

4.2 Learning Systems 13

4.3 Learning Aims of the Geometrical Path Planning 15

4.4 Methods of Mechanistic Learning 19

5. Transducers and Sensors for Robot Systems 21

5.1 Transducers 21

5.2 Sensors 22

6. The Autonomous Robot in Agriculture 29

6.1 Robot Tasks 29

6.2 Driving and Steering Systems 29

6.3 Running Gear for Autonomous Mobile Robots 32

6.4 Navigation Systems 35

6.5 Autonomous Vehicles in Agriculture 40

6.6 Review of Research 47

7. Test Vehicle 55

7.1 High Lifting Platform 55

7.2 Autonomous Vehicle 70

7.3 Tests with the Autonomous Vehicle 83

8. Results and Discussion 91

8.1 Results 91

8.2 Discussion 93

9. Conclusions 95

References 96

Appendix 100

A-1 Assembly Drawings of the High Lifting Platform 100

A-2 Assembly Drawings and Parts List of the Autonomous Vehicle 103

A-3 Control Circuit (Wiring Diagram) and PCB 111

A-4 Graphs and Test Results of the Autonomous Vehicle 114

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