Click on “Download PDF” for the PDF version or on the title for the HTML version. If you are not an ASABE member or if your employer has not arranged for access to the full-text, Click here for options. Autonomous Orchard Vehicles for Specialty Crops ProductionPublished by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org Citation: 2011 Louisville, Kentucky, August 7-10, 2011 1111071.(doi:10.13031/2013.37410)Authors: Bradley Hamner, Marcel Bergerman, Sanjiv Singh Keywords: Specialty crops, Efficiency improvement, Labor cost reduction, Crop intelligence, Agricultural automation, Autonomous orchard vehicle, Autonomous orchard platform Comprehensive Automation for Specialty Crops (CASC) is a four-year project to develop crop intelligence and agricultural automation technologies for the apple and nursery tree industries. Supported by the USDA Specialty Crop Research Initiative, CASC aims at impacting industry where it matters most: increasing production efficiency and reducing labor costs. In this paper we present our most recent results with the Autonomous Prime Movers, a family of reconfigurable vehicles designed to augment or automate a variety of orchard operations. We discuss the modifications made on the first APM to make it robust to uneven terrain and variance in canopy types, along with field tests that totaled 159 km in autonomous orchard driving. We also present the design and initial deployment of two new autonomous orchard platforms. (Download PDF) (Export to EndNotes)
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