초록
A navigation system was developed for autonomous guidance of a combine. It consisted of a DGPS, a machine vision system, a gyro sensor and an ultrasonic sensor. For an autonomous operation of the combine, target points were determined at first. Secondly, heading angle and offset were calculated by comparing current positions obtained from the DGPS with the target points. Thirdly, the fuzzy controller decided steering angle by the fuzzy inference that took 3 inputs of heading angle, offset and distance to the bank around the rice field. Finally, the hydraulic system was actuated for the combine steering. In the case of the misbehavior of the DGPS, the machine vision system found the desired travel path. In this way, the combine traveled straight paths to the traget point and then turned to the next target point. The gyro sensor was used to check the turning angle. The autonomous combine traveled within 31.11cm deviation(RMS) on the straight paths and harvested up to 96% of the whole rice field. The field experiments proved a possibility of autonomous harvesting. Improvement of the DGPS accuracy should be studied further by compensation variations of combines attitude due to unevenness of the rice field.
