Development of an Autonomous Hand Tractor Platform for Philippine Agricultural Operations

The growing population, low level of mechanization, and climate change puts major constraints onto food production in Philippines’ agriculture. Aside from these, the younger generation are not choosing farming as a career, thus, there is a shortage of labour for farm work. These challenges therefore require innovative and practical solutions. Autonomous navigation as applied in agriculture plays a key role in the advancement of agricultural machineries. Development of agricultural robots became more accessible because of the availability of open source software and hardware. The objective of the research is to develop a platform for autonomous navigation by modifying a walking tractor. Arduino Mega 2560 was used as the main microcontroller and readily available GPS and compass module were used as navigation sensors. Waypoint following test and heading performance test were performed and the results show that the robot can navigate successfully with an inaccuracy of 2 meters from the desired path and a 4 degree RMS heading error was also recorded at a speed of 0.15 m/s. The results from this study can be used as a basis in developing simple autonomous robots which does not require high navigation accuracy such as delivering and carrying loads around the farm.