An agent of behaviour architecture for unmanned control of a farming vehicle

This paper presents a hybrid agent of behaviour architecture to deal with the autonomous navigation of a farming vehicle. To this end, a conventional vehicle was fitted with a set of sensors and actuators to acquire continuous location and environmental data to safely and appropriately interact with a dynamic environment. The vehicle autonomously performs local piloting, following a tentative path initially specified by the human operator through a set of intermediate positions. A wireless LAN is used to get a bi-directional communication between the farming vehicle and the human supervisor. Sensor-fusion algorithms are proposed to overcome the lack of GPS signals so as to obtain continuous and precise positioning. From a set of basic motion agents ADVANCE, TURN, STOP, AVOID OBSTACLE, more specific agents related to the agricultural operation are defined, such as FOLLOW STRAIGHT LINE and CHANGE OF ROW. Some results are presented to show global navigation.