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Under-Canopy Navigation for an Agricultural Rover Based on Image Data

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Abstract

This paper presents an Image data-based autonomous navigation system for an under-canopy agricultural mini-rover called TerraSentia. This kind of navigation is a very challenging problem due to the lack of GNSS accuracy. This happens because the crop leaves and stems attenuate the GNSS signal and produce multi-path data. In such a scenario, reactive navigation techniques based on the detection of crop rows using image data have proved to be an efficient alternative to GNSS. However, it also presents some challenges, mainly owing to leaves occlusions under the canopy and dealing with varying weather conditions. Our system addresses these issues by combining different image-based approaches using low-cost hardware. Tests were carried out using multiple robots, in different field conditions, and in different locations. The results show that our system is able to safely navigate without interventions in fields without significant gaps in the crop rows. In addition to this, we see as future steps, not only comparing more recent convolutional neural networks based on processing power needs and accuracy, but also the fusion of these vision-based approaches previously developed by our group in order to obtain the best of both approaches.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The work was partially supported by Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grant numbers 2020/13037-3, 2020/ 12710-6, 2020/11262-0, 2020/11089-6, and 2020/10533-0. The authors thank EarthSense for support with TerraSentia robots and field data.

Funding

The work was partially supported by Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grant numbers 2020/13037-3, 2020/12710-6, 2020/11262-0, 2020/11089-6, and 2020/10533-0.

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Author notes

  1. All authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sao Carlos Engineering School - EESC, University of Sao Paulo - USP, Av. do Trabalhador Saocarlense, 400, 13566-590, Sao Carlos, SP, Brazil

    Estêvão Serafim Calera, Gabriel Correa de Oliveira, Gabriel Lima Araujo, Jorge Id Facuri Filho, Lucas Toschi & Marcelo Becker

  2. Electrical Engineering Department, Federal University of Sao Carlos - UFSCar, Rod. Washington Luiz, s/n, 13565-905, Sao Carlos, SP, Brazil

    Andre Carmona Hernandes

  3. EarthSense, 1800 South Oak Street, Suite 111, 61820, Champaign, IL, USA

    Andres Eduardo Baquero Velasquez & Vitor Akihiro Hisano Higuti

  4. Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - UIUC, 61801, Urbana, USA

    Mateus Valverde Gasparino & Girish Chowdhary

Authors
  1. Estêvão Serafim Calera
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  2. Gabriel Correa de Oliveira
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. The field preparation, data collection, and experimentation on fields were performed by Andres Eduardo Baquero Velasquez, Mateus Valverde Gsparino, Girish Chowdhary, and Vitor Akihiro Hisano Higuti. Each module development had a responsible, for entrance/exit development was done by Estevão Serafim Calera, Visual Odometry was done by Jorge Id Facuri Filho, orientation estimation and navigation control was done by Gabriel Lima Araujo, for the leaf/soil/sky classifier was performed by Gabriel Correa de Oliveira, and the deep learning plant identification was performed by Lucas Toschi. All modules were supervised by Vitor Akihiro Hisano Higuti, Marcelo Becker, and Andre Carmona Hernandes. All authors contributed to the first draft of the manuscript. Final revisions were performed by Marcelo Becker and Andre Carmona Hernandes. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Andre Carmona Hernandes or Marcelo Becker.

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Calera, E.S., Oliveira, G.C.d., Araujo, G.L. et al. Under-Canopy Navigation for an Agricultural Rover Based on Image Data. J Intell Robot Syst 108, 29 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-023-01849-8

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