Review on Key Technologies for Autonomous Navigation in Field Agricultural Machinery
Autonomous navigation technology plays a crucial role in advancing smart agriculture by enhancing operational efficiency, optimizing resource utilization, and reducing labor dependency. With the rapid integration of information technology, modern agricultural machinery increasingly incorporates adva...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2025-06-01
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| Series: | Agriculture |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/15/12/1297 |
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| _version_ | 1850158069945729024 |
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| author | Hongxuan Wu Xinzhong Wang Xuegeng Chen Yafei Zhang Yaowen Zhang |
| author_facet | Hongxuan Wu Xinzhong Wang Xuegeng Chen Yafei Zhang Yaowen Zhang |
| author_sort | Hongxuan Wu |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Autonomous navigation technology plays a crucial role in advancing smart agriculture by enhancing operational efficiency, optimizing resource utilization, and reducing labor dependency. With the rapid integration of information technology, modern agricultural machinery increasingly incorporates advanced techniques such as high-precision positioning, environmental perception, path planning, and path-tracking control. This paper presents a comprehensive review of recent advancements in these core technologies, systematically analyzing their methodologies, advantages, and application scenarios. Despite notable progress, considerable challenges persist, primarily due to the unstructured nature of farmland, varying terrain conditions, and the demand for robust and adaptive control strategies. This review also discusses current limitations and outlines prospective research directions, aiming to provide valuable insights for the future development and practical deployment of autonomous navigation systems in agricultural machinery. Future research is expected to focus on enhancing multi-modal perception under occlusion and variable lighting conditions, developing terrain-aware path planning algorithms that adapt to irregular field boundaries and elevation changes and designing robust control strategies that integrate model-based and learning-based approaches to manage disturbances and non-linearity. Furthermore, tighter integration among perception, planning, and control modules will be crucial for improving system-level intelligence and coordination in real-world agricultural environments. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-8e8fec7839e34a2aa757397e9c092ae8 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2077-0472 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-06-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Agriculture |
| spelling | doaj-art-8e8fec7839e34a2aa757397e9c092ae82025-08-20T02:23:59ZengMDPI AGAgriculture2077-04722025-06-011512129710.3390/agriculture15121297Review on Key Technologies for Autonomous Navigation in Field Agricultural MachineryHongxuan Wu0Xinzhong Wang1Xuegeng Chen2Yafei Zhang3Yaowen Zhang4Key Laboratory of Modern Agricultural Equipment and Technology of Ministry of Education, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, ChinaSchool of Agriculture Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, ChinaSchool of Agriculture Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, ChinaSchool of Electrical and Information Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, ChinaSchool of Agriculture Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, ChinaAutonomous navigation technology plays a crucial role in advancing smart agriculture by enhancing operational efficiency, optimizing resource utilization, and reducing labor dependency. With the rapid integration of information technology, modern agricultural machinery increasingly incorporates advanced techniques such as high-precision positioning, environmental perception, path planning, and path-tracking control. This paper presents a comprehensive review of recent advancements in these core technologies, systematically analyzing their methodologies, advantages, and application scenarios. Despite notable progress, considerable challenges persist, primarily due to the unstructured nature of farmland, varying terrain conditions, and the demand for robust and adaptive control strategies. This review also discusses current limitations and outlines prospective research directions, aiming to provide valuable insights for the future development and practical deployment of autonomous navigation systems in agricultural machinery. Future research is expected to focus on enhancing multi-modal perception under occlusion and variable lighting conditions, developing terrain-aware path planning algorithms that adapt to irregular field boundaries and elevation changes and designing robust control strategies that integrate model-based and learning-based approaches to manage disturbances and non-linearity. Furthermore, tighter integration among perception, planning, and control modules will be crucial for improving system-level intelligence and coordination in real-world agricultural environments.https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/15/12/1297autonomous navigationfield agricultural machineryenvironmental perceptionpath planningpath-tracking control |
| spellingShingle | Hongxuan Wu Xinzhong Wang Xuegeng Chen Yafei Zhang Yaowen Zhang Review on Key Technologies for Autonomous Navigation in Field Agricultural Machinery Agriculture autonomous navigation field agricultural machinery environmental perception path planning path-tracking control |
| title | Review on Key Technologies for Autonomous Navigation in Field Agricultural Machinery |
| title_full | Review on Key Technologies for Autonomous Navigation in Field Agricultural Machinery |
| title_fullStr | Review on Key Technologies for Autonomous Navigation in Field Agricultural Machinery |
| title_full_unstemmed | Review on Key Technologies for Autonomous Navigation in Field Agricultural Machinery |
| title_short | Review on Key Technologies for Autonomous Navigation in Field Agricultural Machinery |
| title_sort | review on key technologies for autonomous navigation in field agricultural machinery |
| topic | autonomous navigation field agricultural machinery environmental perception path planning path-tracking control |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/15/12/1297 |
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