1999 Volume 61 Issue 2 Pages 71-79
A new positioning method for agricultural robots with a simple laser sensor was developed. At the initializing stage of autonomous traveling, the position and the direction of an autonomous vehicle at a standstill should be fixed as the x and y coordinates and the angle with respect to x coordinate on a field map. This paper deals with a positioning method for initializing, in which a simple laser sensor was used to measure direction angles of light reflectors set around a field. The position and the direction of the vehicle was calculated by the least squares method, which enabled us to estimate measurement accuracy, and give the covariance matrix of the obtained position and direction. Field experiments were carried out to verify the measurement method. The accuracy obtained by the method was within 4cm in a 40m 40m field. Application of the dilution of precision factor are also discussed.
