AN OVERVIEW OF AN AUTONOMOUS FARM ROBOT SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE

Agricultural autonomous field robots are slowly becoming a reality. Quite a few prototype solutions already operate in Europe and worldwide, slowly followed by commercially available solutions. Early adapters of the technology are working closely with the producers to make this kind of solution useful and reliable. This work presents the software architecture of such robots. It explains how they work in semi-changing conditions in the natural environment and includes innovative approaches divided into low, middle, and high-level processing nodes. All these rely on the readings from different sensors, including RTK GPS, visual/mechanical odometry, multichannel LIDAR, IMU, etc. To better explain the topic, the Rovitis (4.0) robot is presented as an example of an autonomous vineyard robot.