A Row Following Algorithm for Agricultural Multi-Robot Systems

Agricultural multi-robot systems (MRSs) are expected to provide effective solutions to improve task efficiency over large fields. However, MRSs for agricultural applications are still being investigated and several challenges need to be faced, including localization, control, path planning and navigation. This paper presents an algorithm for the control of a multi-robot system operating in row crop fields. The proposed strategy enables a multi-robot system to follow each field row in a fully distributed way, while avoiding collision. The only assumption is that each robot can estimate the relative pose with respect to the row and the preceding robot. The theoretical demonstration of the stability of the control law is given. Moreover, numerical simulations corroborate the results.