TY - JOUR
T1 - Bin-dog
T2 - A robotic platform for bin management in orchards
AU - Ye, Yunxiang
AU - Wang, Zhaodong
AU - Jones, Dylan
AU - He, Long
AU - Taylor, Matthew E.
AU - Hollinger, Geoffrey A.
AU - Zhang, Qin
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments: This research was partially supported in part by USDA Hatch and Multistate Project Funds (Accession Nos. 1005756 and 1001246), a USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) competitive grant (Accession No. 1003828), and the Washington State University (WSU) Agricultural Research Center (ARC). The China Scholarship Council (CSC) partially sponsored Yunxiang Ye in conducting dissertation research at the WSU Center for Precision and Automated Agricultural Systems (CPAAS). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of USDA and WSU. This research has taken place in part at the Intelligent Robot Learning (IRL) Lab, Washington State University. IRL’s support includes NASA NNX16CD07C, NSF IIS-1149917, NSF IIS-1643614, and USDA 2014-67021-22174.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 by the authors.
PY - 2017/5/22
Y1 - 2017/5/22
N2 - Bin management during apple harvest season is an important activity for orchards. Typically, empty and full bins are handled by tractor-mounted forklifts or bin trailers in two separate trips. In order to simplify this work process and improve work efficiency of bin management, the concept of a robotic bin-dog system is proposed in this study. This system is designed with a "go-over-the-bin" feature, which allows it to drive over bins between tree rows and complete the above process in one trip. To validate this system concept, a prototype and its control and navigation system were designed and built. Field tests were conducted in a commercial orchard to validate its key functionalities in three tasks including headland turning, straight-line tracking between tree rows, and "go-over-the-bin." Tests of the headland turning showed that bin-dog followed a predefined path to align with an alleyway with lateral and orientation errors of 0.02 m and 1.5°. Tests of straight-line tracking showed that bin-dog could successfully track the alleyway centerline at speeds up to 1.00 m·s-1 with a RMSE offset of 0.07 m. The navigation system also successfully guided the bin-dog to complete the task of go-over-the-bin at a speed of 0.60 m·s-1. The successful validation tests proved that the prototype can achieve all desired functionality.
AB - Bin management during apple harvest season is an important activity for orchards. Typically, empty and full bins are handled by tractor-mounted forklifts or bin trailers in two separate trips. In order to simplify this work process and improve work efficiency of bin management, the concept of a robotic bin-dog system is proposed in this study. This system is designed with a "go-over-the-bin" feature, which allows it to drive over bins between tree rows and complete the above process in one trip. To validate this system concept, a prototype and its control and navigation system were designed and built. Field tests were conducted in a commercial orchard to validate its key functionalities in three tasks including headland turning, straight-line tracking between tree rows, and "go-over-the-bin." Tests of the headland turning showed that bin-dog followed a predefined path to align with an alleyway with lateral and orientation errors of 0.02 m and 1.5°. Tests of straight-line tracking showed that bin-dog could successfully track the alleyway centerline at speeds up to 1.00 m·s-1 with a RMSE offset of 0.07 m. The navigation system also successfully guided the bin-dog to complete the task of go-over-the-bin at a speed of 0.60 m·s-1. The successful validation tests proved that the prototype can achieve all desired functionality.
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U2 - 10.3390/robotics6020012
DO - 10.3390/robotics6020012
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85030991495
SN - 2218-6581
VL - 6
JO - Robotics
JF - Robotics
IS - 2
M1 - 12
ER -