Over a billion tractor miles are driven annually, repeatedly over the same ground. Speeds are low, and precision is moderate. The terrain is mild, and proven navigation techniques apply. The goal of this CMU task is to develop, demonstrate and productize marketworthy controllers, positioners, safeguards, and task software specialized to the needs and constraints of commercial agriculture and related industries. Component technology results will be integrated onto a commercial agricultural harvester, and demonstrations will be conducted of automatically controlled harvesting operations to market relevant standards.
Software architectures provide frameworks for developing complex systems.
They provide commonly needed control constructs that help structure the design problem and facilitate implementation and debugging. Robot architectures that have been developed in recent years are becoming more sophisticated and useful. The main focus of this task is to combine the two architectures, and to demonstrate the advantages of such an integrated architecture in developing complex robotic applications. To make this happen, the task management functions of TCA must be separated from its communications layer. Integration with ControlShell will be in terms of sending signals between the TCML task trees and the ControlShell state machines.