Hydraulic networked control of four wheel steering agricultural robot

In a joint project among research institutions and a private company is being designed and built a multifunctional and modular robotics platform for information acquisition in Precision Agriculture. The robotic platform has as main characteristics four wheels propulsion and independent steering, air suspension and break, adjustable width, span of 1,80m in height, diesel engine, hydraulic system and a CAN-based electronic control system. Several modules can be coupled to the platform: autonomous localization and navigation, computer vision, communication, agricultural parameters sensing, robotic arm, and stabilized stand. The proposed paper presents the four wheels steering distributed control system, based on the difference between the desired and actual position and considering the angular speed of the wheels. The results demonstrate that the distributed control system was simple and efficient, providing suitable steering performance for the platform guidance, and also indicate future work possibilities for the system improvement.