AUTO-STEERING RICE TRANSPLANTER FOR STRAIGHT TRAVELING

摘要

We have developed a rice transplanter that can travel straight by automatic steering (auto-steering). The Auto-steering rice transplanter (ASRT) is a riding type rice transplanter equipped with a navigation sensor unit, control unit, and a control panel The rice transplanter was modified a commercial rice transplanter to enable automatic steering control. The navigation sensor unit has a three-axis geo-magnetic direction sensor, a vibration gyro, etc., but not a position detection sensor such as a GPS. Straight traveling is performed by auto-steering to orient the vehicle heading direction (VHD) of transplanter in the pre-set aimed traveling direction (ATD). The ATD is automatically acquired and set as an average value of the VHD during a manual steering run over a certain distance. Straight traveling performance of ASRT exhibited a sideways deflection of 5cm after the 30m run.