Drive-by-wire automation and field validation of a commercial electric vehicle for autonomous crop monitoring
Effective crop monitoring is vital for optimizing agricultural production, improving crop quality, and reducing operational costs. Ground-based robotic platforms have emerged as precise alternatives to manual inspections, enabling detailed and organized data collection. However, many small and mediu...
| Autores: | , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/417292 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/417292 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Agricultural robotics Autonomous vehicles Electric vehicles Fuzzy control ROS Vehicle automat ROS Vehicle automation Vineyard |
| Sumario: | Effective crop monitoring is vital for optimizing agricultural production, improving crop quality, and reducing operational costs. Ground-based robotic platforms have emerged as precise alternatives to manual inspections, enabling detailed and organized data collection. However, many small and medium-sized agricultural robots are limited in terms of autonomy and reliability. This paper presents the full automation of a low-cost commercial electric vehicle, the Renault Twizy, for use as an autonomous inspection platform in agricultural environments. The system integrates fuzzy logic controllers and a modular CAN-based control architecture to automate the steering, throttle, and braking subsystems. Autonomous navigation capabilities are achieved by integrating the ROS Navigation Stack. Field experiments conducted in vineyard environments validated the system’s ability to navigate autonomously at low speeds, maintain stable trajectories, and perform inter-row manoeuvres without human intervention. The results demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of repurposing urban electric vehicles for agricultural robotics, offering enhanced robustness, extended operational autonomy, and reduced development costs compared with those of conventional robotic platforms. |
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