Vision-Based Guidance of an Agricultural Tractor

The ordered structure of agricultural row crops can provide useful guidance information for tractor control. A description of research for coupling a machine vision system and a solid state camera to derive vehicle guidance parameters for a tractor is presented. Image segmentation is enhanced by optical filtering and controlling light intensity to the image sensor. An analysis of camera location and steering errors that can be determined from the row crops is determined by simulating the geometric relationships between the crop canopy and the image plane.