A glance at the behaviour of a tracked mobile robot on different agricultural surfaces

This research work investigates the behaviour of a tracked mobile robot moving over two different types of agricultural terrain: a rigid surface, such as asphalt or concrete and a deformable clayey soil. A study on the inertial measurements and motor currents data provides an overall analysis of the robot's behaviour during classical agricultural tasks. The analysis includes ground traversability due to terrain roughness and consistency, the stress on the ground due to the vehicle movement and a rapid check of the energy consumption by looking at the motor currents. The authors emphasize that all the information obtained in the manuscript can be retrieved by direct measurements available from relatively inexpensive proprioceptive sensors without onerous calculations or expensive sensors.