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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Robot. AI
Sec. Robot Design
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frobt.2024.1459902
This article is part of the Research Topic Design and Control of Mobile Robots View all articles

Exact linearization and control of a mobile robot for the inspection of soil resources in Solanum tuberosum crops

Provisionally accepted
Álvaro Pulido-Aponte Álvaro Pulido-Aponte Claudia L. Garzón-Castro Claudia L. Garzón-Castro *
  • Universidad de La Sabana, Chía, Colombia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    In recent years, the development of robots for agro-industrial applications, such as the cultivation of Solanum tuberosum potatoes, has aroused the interest of the academic and scientific communities. This is due, at least in part, to the complexity of modeling and robustly controlling some dynamics inherent to nonlinear behaviors normally attributed to the different technologies associated with the movement of these autonomous vehicles and their non-holonomic constraints. The different nonlinear dynamics of mobile robots are usually represented by state-space models. However, given some equilibrium and stability characteristics, the implementation of effective controllers for the robust parametric tracking and variation problem requires techniques that allow the operability of robots around regions of stable equilibrium. Feedback linearization control is one such technique that attempts to mathematically eliminate nonlinear expressions from the plant model. However, this technique requires an observable and controllable mathematical model. If there is some relationship between the model inputs and a controlled output that allows the relative degree of the control law to be determined, the controller design and implementation are posed as a linear issue. Flat filters developed from the generalized proportional integral control approach are an alternative that could facilitate the design of controllers for these linearized systems. From these flat filters, it is possible to obtain the transfer function of a controller without relying on the derivatives of the system output. This work proposes the design of a controller via exact linearization and its equivalent flat filter for a robot inspector of the soil resource of Solanum tuberosum crops in the department of Cundinamarca, Colombia. The actuator motion constraints resulted in a robot with two degrees of mobility and one non-holonomic constraint. Numerical validation of this system suggests that it can be an effective solution to the problem of tracking control at changing references by providing a system capable of navigating through crop rows. The results suggest correct tracking for linear and circular trajectories. However, the control lacks the ability to track spiral-type trajectories.

    Keywords: Differential robot, Exact linearization, Control, non-holonomic restrictions, Agricultural applications, Solanum tuberosum

    Received: 05 Jul 2024; Accepted: 30 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Pulido-Aponte and Garzón-Castro. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Claudia L. Garzón-Castro, Universidad de La Sabana, Chía, Colombia

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