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Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (한국전자통신연구원)
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Design and experimentation of remote driving system for robotic speed sprayer operating in orchard environment

  • Wonpil, Yu (Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) ;
  • Soohwan Song (Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute)
  • Received : 2022.02.25
  • Accepted : 2022.10.11
  • Published : 2023.06.20
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Abstract

The automation of agricultural machines is an irreversible trend considering the demand for improved productivity and lack of labor in handling agricultural tasks. Unstructured working environments and weather often inhibit a seemingly simple task from being fully autonomously performed. In this context, we propose a remote driving system (RDS) to aid agricultural machines designed to operate autonomously. Particularly, we modify a commercial speed sprayer for orchard environments into a robotic speed sprayer to evaluate the proposed RDS's usability and test three sensor configurations in terms of human performance. Furthermore, we propose a confidence error ellipsebased task performance measure to evaluate human performance. In addition, we present field experimental results describing how the sensor configurations affect human performance. We find that a combination of a semiautonomous line tracking device and a wide-angle camera is the most effective for spraying. Finally, we discuss how to improve the proposed RDS in terms of usability and obtain a more accurate measure of human performance.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (2018-0-00205, "Development of Core Technology of Robot Task-Intelligence for Improvement of Labor Condition").

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