Visual control of cotton-picking Rover and manipulator using a ROS-independent finite state machine
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Date
2019-07
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
2019 ASABE Annual International Meeting
Abstract
Small rovers are being developed to pick cotton as bolls open. The concept is to have several of these
rovers move between rows of cotton, and when bolls are detected, use a manipulator to pick the bolls. To accomplish
this goal, each cotton-picking robot needs to accomplish three movements; rover must move forward/backward,
left/right and the manipulator must be able to move to harvest the detected cotton bolls. Control of these actions can
have several states and transitions. Transitions from one state to another can be complex but using ROS-independent
finite state machine (SMACH), adaptive and optimal control can be achieved. SMACH provides task level capability
to deploy multiple tasks to the rover and manipulator. In this research, a cotton-picking robot using a stereo camera
to locate end-effector and cotton bolls is developed. The robot harvests the bolls using a 2D manipulator that moves
linearly horizontally and vertically. The boll 3-D position is determined by calculating stereo camera parameters,
and the decision of the finite state machine guides the manipulator and the rover to the destination. PID control is
deployed to control rover movement to the boll. We demonstrate preliminary results in a direct-sun simulated
environment. The system achieved a picking performance of 17.3 seconds per boll. Also, it covered the task by
navigating at a speed of 0.87 cm per second collecting 0.06 bolls per second. In each mission, the system was able to
detect all the bolls but one.
Description
Conference Papers
Keywords
Cotton-picking, Cotton harvesting, SMACH, Robot