Field Machinery Automated Guidance

Abstract

Automated guidance for field machinery refers to the technology for guiding the trajectory of combine harvesters, tractors and their implements, or other mobile machinery along a planned path without operator intervention. Automated guidance systems involve a control computer, actuators, a path planner, position and motion sensors, a computer terminal with a graphical user interface, and sometimes also communication and control network devices. The computer sends correction signals to the actuators that adjust the steering and acceleration of the machine based on the level of error or mismatch between the reference path defined by the operator or path planner software and the machine’s current position and relative displacement measured by the sensors.