A multi-sensor robotic platform for ground mapping and estimation beyond the visible spectrum

Accurate soil mapping is critical for a highly-automated agricultural vehicle to successfully accomplish important tasks including seeding, ploughing, fertilising and controlled traffic, with limited human supervision, ensuring at the same time high safety standards. In this research, a multi-sensor ground mapping and characterisation approach is proposed, whereby data coming from heterogeneous but complementary sensors, mounted on-board an unmanned rover, are combined to generate a multi-layer map of the environment and specifically of the supporting ground. The sensor suite comprises both exteroceptive and proprioceptive devices. Exteroceptive sensors include a stereo camera, a visible and near-infrared camera and a thermal imager. Proprioceptive data consist of the vertical acceleration of the vehicle sprung mass as acquired by an inertial measurement unit. The paper details the steps for the integration of the different sensor data into a unique multi-layer map and discusses a set of exteroceptive and proprioceptive features for soil characterisation and change detection. Experimental results obtained with an all-terrain vehicle operating on different ground surfaces are presented. It is shown that the proposed technologies could be potentially used to develop all-terrain self-driving systems in agriculture. In addition, multi-modal soil maps could be useful to feed farm management systems that would present to the user various soil layers incorporating colour, geometric, spectral and mechanical properties.