Applications of Key Autonomous Navigation Technologies for Unmanned Agricultural Tractors: A Review

Abstract

Unmanned agricultural tractor (UAT) represents the advanced stage of autonomous navigation and serves as a core technology in agricultural production. It reduces the operator’s workload, and improves operational accuracy and efficiency. This article reviews three aspects of key autonomous navigation technologies for UATs: perception, path planning and tracking, and motion control. The advantages, and shortages of these key technologies on UATs are clarified by analyzing technical principles and the current research status. We conducted summaries and analyses of existing unmanned navigation solutions for different application scenarios in order to identify current bottleneck issues. Based on the analysis of the applicability of key autonomous navigation technologies on UATs, it can be seen that fruitful research progresses have been achieved. The review also summarizes the common problems in current technologies. The application research on sharing and integrating multi-source data for autonomous navigation are relatively weak. There is an urgent need of high-precision, and high-stability sensing equipment. The universality of path planning methods, and the efficiency and precision of path tracking need to be improved. It is necessary to develop high reliability electrical control modules to enhance motion control performance. Overall, advanced sensors, high-performance intelligent algorithms, and reliable electrical control hardware are key factors in promoting the development of UAT technology.