Performance Comparison of Two Guidance Systems for Agricultural Equipment Navigation

Cover crops have been gaining popularity in the Northern Great Plains as an effective practice to improve soil health. An accurate guidance system when planting cover crops between rows of standing corn at V6-V8 stage requires precise navigation to avoid damaging standing crop, but field observations showed that the grain cart often trampled over rows of plant. Development of accurate and efficient methods, to find the correct path to guide the farm equipment automatically during these operations is an important need. In this project, the capabilities of Ultrasonic and Tactile navigation sensor (Reichhardtd^® Electronic Innovation Products) were studied and compared. The objective of this study was to consider the difference between performances of two navigation systems that would guide the grain cart tires to move between rows for different operating conditions, speeds, patterns of rows, and terrain conditions. The comparison tests were conducted with five different fixed speeds, variable speeds, and four different row patterns in laboratory conditions on a purposefully designed test bench. The study results show that both sensors can successfully locate/identify row patterns if they are appropriately adjusted. But the steering system of the test bench has failed to respond with respect to the identified rows by the sensors due to a missing feedback controller. Moreover, appropriate digital filters were designed to remove undesired noises of signals read by the sensors and a fit model was found to compute exact physical location of the system with respect to rows.