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.

A challenge for autonomous field robotic systems for agriculture is preserving the general-purpose capabilities of the machine for various types of operations and maneuvers. This study addressed the issue of the dynamic nature of headland turning of the vehicle using third-order spline functions. The methodologies that were developed considered both the non-holonomic aspects of vehicle motion and the constraints on the curvature of the path that is acceptable on the headland. This automatic path creation method could generate feasible headland turning paths for the vehicle. Computer simulations and field tests were performed using a mobile robot vehicle based on a medium-size tractor. The robotic vehicle used a real-time kinematic GPS (RTK-GPS) and a fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) as navigation sensors. Through the field tests, it was concluded that the developed path creation method allowed the robot to make turns precisely.