Path Planning and Controller Development for UGVs
Mohammad Aftabi Talami, Shafi Md. Istiak, Rafat Safayet, James Y Kim, Sulaymon L. Eshkabilov · 2025
Abstract. Farming has been the main practice that enabled humankind to develop civilizations and increase the population. According to the United Nations report, the world population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. In order to meet the demand for food, the farming productivity needs to be increased significantly. The agriculture has rapidly evolved into a high-technology industry. Novel precision agriculture technologies provide real-time data on crop health, growth, and yield, enabling timely interventions for farmers. Applications of autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are one of the major avenues in developing farming technologies to enhance productivity and increase efficiency. UGVs are used in farming for various operations, such as surveying, logistics, weeding, harvesting, and so forth. Path planning of UGVs is a challenging task due to the variability of terrain conditions in farmlands that leads to varying traction of UGV‘s wheels with the terrain. That subsequently increases the path tracking error during UGVs‘ operations. We developed a method on how to generate repetitive paths using a partial path point approach and control method to mitigate such tracking errors. The experimental results with a skid-steer four-wheel-drive UGV platform to reduce the tracking error demonstrate promising results and show a high accuracy of the proposed method.