Marker Based Row Alignment Control for an Agricultural Scouting Robot

Abstract In recent years, autonomous robots have been gradually introduced into various agricultural operations to address the ever-increasing labor shortage problem. Accurate navigation from one row to another is one of the many challenging tasks for an autonomous robot scouting in semi-structured agricultural fields. In this study, a marker-based row alignment control is proposed for the cross-bed motion of a scouting robot in strawberry fields. Specifically, a feature-based computer vision algorithm is used to detect primitive markers placed at the end of each planting bed. Then the image coordinates of detected markers are used to guide the robot to move away from one row and then align with the next one. The proposed method is low cost and robust with respect to varying lighting conditions, and has been validated in a local strawberry farm.