The research subject of “Tilling Robot” which aims at practical use, has been started in 1993. Tilling robot is one of the topics under research subjects of “the Project of Development Innovative Agricultural Machines”. New types of navigation systems are designed and studied for the tilling robot. The paper presents the navigation system XNAV-II with optical methods.
The XNAV-II is consist of the ground section, the vehicle section and the communication systems. The ground section is composed of the transit, the machine vision system and the computer system. The vehicle section is composed of the strobe flash light and the reflector. The TV camera and the laser range meter are equipped on the transit, and horizontal and vertical axes of the transit are driven by pulse motors through harmonic and worm reduction gears. The theory of the XNAV-II is based on the principle of traverse surveying. The modified prototype XNAV-II has been tested on a field, and its performances (mean sampling intervals: 0.52sec, mean positioning errors: ±5cm) were satisfactory in general.
