Experimental Analysis of an Autonomous Driving Strategy for a Four-Wheel Differential Drive Agricultural Rover

Currently, the entire agricultural sector is under significant pressure. The causes that may explain this are different, such as climate change, market instability, and the decline in the population of agricultural workers. As a result, the agricultural tractor and machinery field is at the center of an intense technological revolution. One of the possible solutions to the aforementioned problems can be represented by agricultural vehicles equipped with autonomous driving systems. The key pillar of an autonomous driven vehicle is its autonomous driving algorithm which represents the link between the information coming from the vehicle’s sensor systems and the success of the vehicle’s operative mission. In this paper, an experimental assessment of the motion strategy for a four-wheel differential drive agricultural rover was conducted. This work is structured in three parts. First, the description of the working principles of the autonomous driving algorithm is proposed. Then, the case study and the scaled prototype designed for this purpose are described. In the end, the result obtained by the virtual model, which acts as reference case, is compared with the results that came out of the field test campaign. The outcomes show the overlap between the virtual and real results.