Method for an electronic controlled platooning system of agricultural vehicles

This paper presents a method to develop an electronic controlled platooning system, which will enable an autonomous agricultural vehicle to follow a leading tractor with a given lateral and longitudinal offset. In our study not only the follow-up motions but also the problems such as avoiding obstacle, turning at the end of the field have been considered. With the aid of the RTK GPS systems the position of the leading tractor can be obtained with accuracy in the range of centimeters. The position points of the leading tractor are transmitted by wireless modems to the following vehicle continually to provide the target position points for the guidance of the following agricultural vehicle. With the method of curve fitting a desired path for the following vehicle could be dynamically created. Based on the target position points and the path planning, the desired speed and the desired steering angle of the following tractor are calculated. In order to ensure the precise navigation of the driverless following tractor, a course tracking controller and a speed controller have to be designed and implemented. In addition to the motion control algorithms which could keep the autonomous agricultural vehicle following the leading tractor, considerations about safety and robustness of the whole platooning control system would be issued at the end of this paper.