Development of a robot tractor controlled by a human-driven tractor system

A robot tractor controlled by a human-driven tractor system was developed to solve the problem of agriculture labor shortage. In this type of system, a robot does farm work while a human-driven tractor is following and doing a different operation. An RTK-GPS and IMU were mounted on the robot for navigation. A remote control system was developed to assist the human's operation. The results of an experiment using this system showed that by following a robot, the range of lateral errors of the human-driven tractor improved from 0.2 m to 0.15 m. The experiment field is 5.3 ha, and it took 8.7 h to finish tillage and planting, 6.3 h less than that using a single tractor.