A research on the development of GİS-based autonomous auger robot prototype

In this study, a GIS (Geographic Information Systems)-based autonomous auger robot capable of autonomously digging planting holes in orchards was developed. The agricultural mobile robot is equipped with a differential steering system and has the ability to advance towards fixed target positions. It has a four-wheeled, non-holonomic structure. The designed mobile robot can be used in fully autonomous, semi-autonomous, or fully manual modes. The hole-digging system, driven by a DC motor with a gearbox, consists of a sliding mechanism along the y-axis and an auger powered by a 2.1 HP gasoline engine. The design and modeling of the mobile robot and the hole-digging system were carried out using SOLIDWORKS 2020 software. Microsoft Visual Basic.NET programming language was used in the development of the robot's navigation system and drilling mechanism software. To guide the mobile robot to the desired point, the distance between the current position and the target, along with the heading and azimuth angles, are utilized. The coordinates sent from any environment for the target point contain the latitude and longitude information of the target. The navigation process is carried out based on the mathematical relationship between the robot's own coordinate data, the heading angle values, and the coordinates of the determined target point. The robot's heading angle, the azimuth angle of the target, and the distance between the two points are calculated in real-time by the software running on an industrial computer. The robot adjusts its direction towards the target point until the heading and azimuth angles align. The developed software allows an industrial computer to be installed on the mobile robot. Thus, the robot can be monitored and controlled remotely via an internet connection. The cross-track error (XTE), which determines the distances between the actual and desired hole positions, was used to analyze the accuracy of the mobile robot's navigation to the hole-digging points. As a result, the average positional accuracy of the mobile robot was determined to be 4.35 cm, with a standard deviation of 1.73 cm. These values demonstrate that the proposed system is effective and usable for digging seedling holes in orchards. No similar study related to autonomous hole-digging has been encountered in the literature, and it is believed that this study makes a unique contribution to the field of agricultural robotics.