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Noboru Noguchi
Research Faculty of Agriculture　Fundamental AgriScience Research　Bioresource and Environmental Engineering
Professor
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Last Updated :2024/05/09

Researcher Profile and Settings

Affiliation

  • Research Faculty of Agriculture　Fundamental AgriScience Research　Bioresource and Environmental Engineering

Job Title

  • Professor

URL

J-Global ID

Research Interests

  • スマート農業   リモートセンシング   フィールドロボット   生物環境情報   Precision agriculture   Remotesensing   Bio-robotics   Bio-infotronics   

Research Areas

  • Environmental science/Agricultural science / Agricultural environmental and information engineering

Educational Organization

Academic & Professional Experience

  • 2021/04 - Today Hokkaido University
  • 2004/04 - Today Hokkaido University Graduate School of Agriculture Research Faculty of Agriculture
  • 1997/04 - 2004/03 Hokkaido University
  • 1990/04 - 1997/03 Hokkaido University

Education

  • 1987/04 - 1990/03  Hokkaido University
  • 1985/04 - 1987/03  Hokkaido University
  • 1980/04 - 1985/03  Hokkaido University  Faculty of Agriculture  Department of Agricultural Engineering

Association Memberships

  • 日本生物環境工学会   農業情報学会   日本農業工学会   国際農業工学会(CIGR)   国際自動制御連合(IFAC)   日本ロボット学会   JAPANESE SOCIETY OF AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY AND FOOD ENGINEERS   日本機械学会   

Research Activities

Published Papers

  • サイバーフィジカルシステムにおけるロボットトラクタの走行制御
    森田 豪, Sristi Saha, 野口 伸
    農業食料工学会誌 85 (6) 393 - 399 2023/12 [Refereed]
  • Sixun Chen, Noboru Noguchi
    Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 215 108409 - 108409 0168-1699 2023/12 [Refereed]
  • Khin Nilar Swe, Sawa Takai, Noboru Noguchi
    Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 211 108037 - 108037 0168-1699 2023/08 [Refereed]
  • Work schedule optimization for electric agricultural robots in orchards
    Tomoaki Hizatate, Noboru Noguchi
    Computers and Electronics in Agriculture Volume 210 107889  2023/07 [Refereed]
  • 石橋 亮太, Sristi SAHA, 森田 豪, 前田 浩明, 河村 憲一, 野口 伸
    電子情報通信学会論文誌 C (4) 154 - 162 2023/04 [Refereed][Invited]
  • Yoshitomo Yamasaki, Noboru Noguchi
    Smart Agricultural Technology 3 100141 - 100141 2772-3755 2023/02 [Refereed]
  • Mengmeng Du, Minzan Li, Noboru Noguchi, Jiangtao Ji, Mengchao (George) Ye
    Drones 7 (1) 43 - 43 2023/01/07 [Refereed]
     
    FVC (fractional vegetation cover) is highly correlated with wheat plant density in the reviving period, which is an important indicator for conducting variable-rate nitrogenous topdressing. In this study, with the objective of improving inversion accuracy of wheat plant density, an innovative approach of retrieval of FVC values from remote sensing images of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) was proposed based on the mixed pixel decomposition method. Firstly, remote sensing images of an experimental wheat field were acquired by using a DJI Mini UAV and endmembers in the image were identified. Subsequently, a linear unmixing model was used to subdivide mixed pixels into components of vegetation and soil, and an abundance map of vegetation was acquired. Based on the abundance map of vegetation, FVC was calculated. Consequently, a linear regression model between the ground truth data of wheat plant density and FVC was established. The coefficient of determination (R2), RMSE (root mean square error), and RRMSE (Relative-RMSE) of the inversion model were calculated as 0.97, 1.86 plants/m2, and 0.677%, which indicates strong correlation between the FVC of mixed pixel decomposition method and wheat plant density. Therefore, we can conclude that the mixed pixel decomposition model of the remote sensing image of a UAV significantly improved the inversion accuracy of wheat plant density from FVC values, which provides method support and basic data for variable-rate nitrogenous fertilization in the wheat reviving period in the manner of precision agriculture.
  • Sristi SAHA, Tsuyoshi MORITA, Noboru NOGUCHI
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 16 (2) 43 - 52 2023 [Refereed]
  • Yue Yu, Yufei Liu, Jichun Wang, Noboru Noguchi, Yong He
    Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 204 107546 - 107546 0168-1699 2023/01 [Refereed]
  • ビジョンセンサによるぶどう果樹園の自動走行に関する研究
    山中章弘, 山﨑歓友, 野口 伸
    農業食料工学会誌 84 (4) 256 - 264 2022/07 [Refereed]
  • Ali Roshanianfard, Noboru Noguchi, Sina Ardabili, Csaba Mako, Amir Mosavi
    Agronomy 12 (7) 1594 - 1594 2022/06/30 [Refereed]
     
    The present study focused on the development, optimization, and performance evaluation of a harvesting robot for heavyweight agricultural products. The main objective of developing this system is to improve the harvesting process of the mentioned crops. The pumpkin was selected as a heavyweight target crop for this study. The main components of the robot consist of mobile platforms (the main robot tractor and a parallel robot tractor), a manipulation system and its end-effector, and an integrated control unit. The development procedure was divided into four stages: stage I (designed system using Solidworks), stage II (installation of the developed system on a temporary platform), stage III (developed system on an RT-1 (Yanmar EG453)), and stage IV (developed system on an RT-2 (Yanmar YT5113)). Various indicators related to the performance of the robot were evaluated. The accuracy of 5.8 and 4.78 mm in x and y directions and repeatability of 5.11 mm were observed. The harvesting success rate of 87~92%, and damage rate of 5% resulted in the evaluation of the final version. The average cycle time was 35.1 s, 42.6 s, and 43.2 s for stages II, III, and IV, respectively. The performance evaluations showed that the system’s indicators are good enough to harvest big-sized and heavy-weighted crops. Development of the unique and unified system, including a mobile platform, a manipulation system, an end-effector, and an integrated algorithm, completed the targeted harvesting process appropriately. The system can increase the speed and improve the harvesting process because it can work all day long, has a precise robotic manipulation and end-effector, and a programmable controlling system that can work autonomously.
  • Ryota ISHIBASHI, Takuma TSUBAKI, Shingo OKADA, Hiroshi YAMAMOTO, Takeshi KUWAHARA, Kenichi KAWAMURA, Keisuke WAKAO, Takatsune MORIYAMA, Ricardo OSPINA, Hiroshi OKAMOTO, Noboru NOGUCHI
    IEICE Transactions on Communications E105.B (4) 364 - 378 0916-8516 2022/04/01 [Refereed][Invited]
  • Yoshitomo Yamasaki, Mizuki Morie, Noboru Noguchi
    Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 193 106630 - 106630 0168-1699 2022/02 [Refereed]
  • Thanh Tinh NGUYEN, Ricardo OSPINA, Noboru NOGUCHI, Hiroshi OKAMOTO, Quang Hieu NGO
    Environment Control in Biology 59 (2) 77 - 85 1880-554X 2021/04/01 [Refereed]
  • Kannapat Udompant, Ricardo Ospina, Yong-Joo Kim, Noboru Noguchi
    Agronomy 11 (3) 483 - 483 2021/03/05 [Refereed]
     
    The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of a robot combine harvester by comparing the Centimeter Level Augmentation Service (CLAS) and the Multi-Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Advanced Demonstration tool for Orbit and Clock Analysis (MADOCA) from the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) by using the Real Time Kinematic (RTK) positioning technique as a reference. The first section of this study evaluates the availability and the precision under static conditions by measuring the activation time, the reconnection time, and obtaining a Twice Distance Root Mean Square (2DRMS) of 0.04 m and 0.10 m, a Circular Error Probability (CEP) of 0.03 m and 0.08 m, and a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.57 m and 0.54 m for the CLAS and MADOCA, respectively. The second section evaluates the accuracy under dynamic conditions by using a GNSS navigation-based combine harvester running in an experimental field. The results show that the RMSE of the lateral deviation is between 0.04 m and 0.69 m for MADOCA and between 0.03 m and 0.31 m for CLAS; which suggest that the CLAS positioning augmentation system can be utilized for the robot combine harvester if the user considers these accuracy and dynamic characteristics.
  • Mengmeng DU, Noboru NOGUCHI, Atsushi ITO, Yukinori SHIBUYA
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 14 (3) 86 - 94 2021 [Refereed]
  • Basic research on a field scouting robot monitoring crop progress and condition (Part 1)
    Yamasaki, Y, Ikeda, I, Ospina, R, Noguchi, N
    Journal of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 83 (1) 37 - 41 2021/01 [Refereed]
  • Suxing Lyu, Noboru Noguchi, Ricardo Ospina, Yuji Kishima
    International Journal of Agricultural and Biological Engineering 14 (1) 207 - 215 1934-6344 2021 [Refereed]
     
    In this study, a lightweight phenotyping system that combined the advantages of both deep learning-based panicle detection and the photogrammetry based on light consumer-level UAVs was proposed. A two-year experiment was conducted to perform data collection and accuracy validation. A deep learning model, named Mask Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Mask R-CNN), was trained to detect panicles in complex scenes of paddy fields. A total of 13 857 images were fed into Mask R-CNN, with 80% used for training and 20% used for validation. Scores, precision, recall, Average Precision (AP), and F1-score of the Mask R-CNN, were 82.46%, 80.60%, 79.46%, and 79.66%, respectively. A complete workflow was proposed to preprocess flight trajectories and remove repeated detection and noises. Eventually, the evident changed in rice growth during the heading stage was visualized with geographic distributions, and the total number of panicles was predicted before harvest. The average error of the predicted amounts of panicles was 33.98%. Experimental results showed the feasibility of using the developed system as the high-throughput phenotyping approach.
  • Hao Wang, Noboru Noguchi
    GPS Solutions 25 (1) 1080-5370 2020/11/13 [Refereed]
     
    Abstract We present a pure data-driven method to estimate vehicle dynamics from the measurements of sideslip and yaw rate in the use of GPS and inertial navigation system. The GPS and INS configuration provides vehicle position, velocity vector, vehicle orientation, and yaw rate observations. A new dynamic mode decomposition with control (DMDc) method denoises the state observations by adopting the total least-squares algorithm. The total least-squares DMD with control (tlsDMDc) helps discover the underlying dynamics with the time-dependent observations of states and external control. The experiments of a simulated linear dynamic model with synthetic Gaussian noise illustrate that the solutions of tlsDMDc are more accurate than the standard DMDc to characterize underlying dynamics with imperfect measurements. We additionally investigate how the algorithm performs on vehicle motion deduction and sensor bias correction. It has been shown that the tlsDMDc-based state estimator with the couple of GPS and inertial sensor measurements provides accurate and robust observation in the presence of model error and measurement noise.
  • Ali Roshanianfard, Noboru Noguchi
    Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 174 105503 - 105503 0168-1699 2020/07 [Refereed]
  • Real-Time Weed Detection in Rice Fields in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta
    Nguyen, T. T, Ospina, R, Noguchi, N, Okamoto, H, Ngo, Q.H
    Journal of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 82 (3) 247 - 256 2020/05 [Refereed]
  • Ricardo Ospina, Noboru Noguchi
    International Journal of Agricultural and Biological Engineering 13 (6) 183 - 194 1934-6344 2020
  • Hao Wang, Noboru Noguchi
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 12 (4) 414 - 419 1881-8366 2019/10 [Refereed]
  • Navigation of a robot tractor using the Japanese Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (Part 1)
    Wang Hao, Noguchi, N
    Journal of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 81 (4) 250 - 255 2019/07 [Refereed]
  • Ricardo Ospina, Noboru Noguchi
    Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 162 602 - 612 0168-1699 2019/07 [Refereed]
  • Yufei Liu, Noboru Noguchi, Lingguang Liang
    Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 162 126 - 133 0168-1699 2019/07 [Refereed]
  • Rahman Md. Mostafizar, Ishii Kazunobu, Noguchi Noboru
    INTELLIGENT SERVICE ROBOTICS 12 (2) 167 - 179 1861-2776 2019/04 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Yin Xiang, Du Juan, Noguchi Noboru, Yang Tengxiang, Jin Chengqian
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING 11 (6) 89 - 94 1934-6344 2018/11 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Wang Hao, Noguchi Noboru
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING 11 (6) 113 - 119 1934-6344 2018/11 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • 三浦尚史, 野口伸
    農業食料工学会誌 80 (5) 297‐306  2188-224X 2018/09 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Yin Xiang, Noguchi Noboru, Yang Tengxiang, Jin Chengqian
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING 11 (5) 95 - 99 1934-6344 2018/09 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi Noboru
    JOURNAL OF ROBOTICS AND MECHATRONICS 30 (2) 165 - 172 0915-3942 2018/04 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Ricardo Ospina, Noboru Noguchi
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 11 (1) 9 - 18 1881-8366 2018/01/01 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This paper introduces an alternative method to model the tire dynamic parameters of an agricultural vehicle from experimental data sets without the use of conventional test equipment. A Global Positioning System implementing a Real Time Kinematic scheme (RTK-GPS) and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) are used to estimate the vehicle's body sideslip angle and to establish the relation between the tire's lateral forces and slip angles for different soil conditions in terms of soil moisture content and cone index. To validate the method introduced in this paper, the results obtained from the experimental data sets were compared with an empirical modeling method which uses a particular form of the relationship between lateral force, normal force and slip angle expressed as an exponential function. Results show that the method introduced in this paper can give a more accurate description of the relation between the tire's lateral forces and slip angles. This knowledge can be applied to improve automatic steering controller systems.
  • Liu Yufei, Noguchi Noboru, Okamoto Hiroshi, Ishii Kazunobu
    TARIM BILIMLERI DERGISI-JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES 24 (1) 33 - 41 1300-7580 2018 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Roshanianfard Ali, Noguchi Noboru
    TARIM BILIMLERI DERGISI-JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES 24 (1) 91 - 104 1300-7580 2018 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Kamata Tatsuki, Roshanianfard Ali, Noguchi Noboru
    IFAC PAPERSONLINE 51 (17) 244 - 249 2405-8963 2018 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Roshanianfard Ali, Kamata Tatsuki, Noguchi Noboru
    IFAC PAPERSONLINE 51 (17) 332 - 338 2405-8963 2018 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Chi Zhang, Noboru Noguchi
    COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS IN AGRICULTURE 142 79 - 90 0168-1699 2017/11 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    A multi-robot tractor system for conducting agriculture field work was developed in order to reduce total work time and to improve work efficiency. The robot tractors can form a spatial pattern, I-pattern, V-pattern or W-pattern, during the work process. The safety zones of each robot were defined as a circle and a rectangle. The robots can coordinate to turn to the next lands without collision or deadlock. The efficiency of the system depends on the number of robots, the spatial pattern, the setting distance between each robot, and the field length. Three simulations were carried out to determine the usefulness of the system. The simulation results showed that the efficiency range of three robots using the I-pattern is from 83.2% to 89.8% at a field length of 100 m. The efficiency range of seven robots using the W-pattern is from 59.4% to 65.8% at a field length of 100 m. However, the minimum efficiency of seven robots using the W-pattern is 84.9% at a field length of 500 m. The efficiency would be higher than 85% if the field length was larger than 500 m. Thus, the newly developed multi-robot tractor system is more effective in a large field. (c) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
  • Du Mengmeng, Noguchi Noboru, Itoh Atsushi, Shibuya Yukinori
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING 10 (5) 1 - 13 1934-6344 2017/09 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Recently near-ground remote sensing using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) witnessed wide applications in obtaining field information. In this research, four Rapideye satellite images and eight RGB images acquired from UAV were used from early June to the end of July, 2015 covering two experimental winter wheat fields, in order to monitor wheat canopy growth status and analyze the correlation among satellite images based normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) with UAV's RGB images based visible-band difference vegetation index (VDVI) and ground variables of the sampled grain protein contents. Firstly, through image interpretation of UAV's multi-temporal RGB images with fine spatial resolution, the wheat canopy color changes could be intuitively and clearly monitored. Subsequently, by monitoring the changes of satellite images based NDVI as well as VDVI values and UAV's RGB images based VDVI values, the conclusions were made that these three vegetation indices demonstrated the same and synchronized trend of increasing at the early stage of wheat growth season, reaching up to peak values at the same timing, and starting to decrease since then. The results of the correlation analysis between NDVI of satellite images and sampled grain protein contents show that NDVI has good predicative capability for mapping grain protein content before ripening growth stage around June7, 2015, while the reliability of using satellite image based NDVI to predict grain protein contents becomes worse as ripening stage approaches. The regression analysis between UAV's RGB image based VDVI and satellite image based VDVI as well as NDVI showed good coefficients of determination. It is concluded that it is feasible and practical to temporally complement satellite remote sensing by using UAV's RGB images based vegetation indices to monitor wheat growth status and to map within-field spatial variations of grain protein contents for small scale farmlands.
  • Mengmeng Du, Noboru Noguchi
    REMOTE SENSING 9 (3) 2072-4292 2017/03 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Applications of remote sensing using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in agriculture has proved to be an effective and efficient way of obtaining field information. In this study, we validated the feasibility of utilizing multi-temporal color images acquired from a low altitude UAV-camera system to monitor real-time wheat growth status and to map within-field spatial variations of wheat yield for smallholder wheat growers, which could serve as references for site-specific operations. Firstly, eight orthomosaic images covering a small winter wheat field were generated to monitor wheat growth status from heading stage to ripening stage in Hokkaido, Japan. Multi-temporal orthomosaic images indicated straightforward sense of canopy color changes and spatial variations of tiller densities. Besides, the last two orthomosaic images taken from about two weeks prior to harvesting also notified the occurrence of lodging by visual inspection, which could be used to generate navigation maps guiding drivers or autonomous harvesting vehicles to adjust operation speed according to specific lodging situations for less harvesting loss. Subsequently orthomosaic images were geo-referenced so that further study on stepwise regression analysis among nine wheat yield samples and five color vegetation indices (CVI) could be conducted, which showed that wheat yield correlated with four accumulative CVIs of visible-band difference vegetation index (VDVI), normalized green-blue difference index (NGBDI), green-red ratio index (GRRI), and excess green vegetation index (ExG), with the coefficient of determination and RMSE as 0.94 and 0.02, respectively. The average value of sampled wheat yield was 8.6 t/ha. The regression model was also validated by using leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV) method, of which root-mean-square error of predication (RMSEP) was 0.06. Finally, based on the stepwise regression model, a map of estimated wheat yield was generated, so that within-field spatial variations of wheat yield, which was usually seen as general information on soil fertility, water potential, tiller density, etc., could be better understood for applications of site-specific or variable-rate operations. Average yield of the studied field was also calculated according to the map of wheat yield as 7.2 t/ha.
  • Yufei Liu, Noboru Noguchi, Roshanian Fard Ali
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING 10 (1) 88 - 96 1934-6344 2017/01 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research was to determine the Nomoto model maneuverability indices of an agricultural unmanned airboat which was developed to perform autonomous weeding and paddy growth monitoring in a paddy field. A global positioning system compass and an inertial measurement unit were attached on the airboat body to record the position, heading and angular rate. The zig-zag experiments were adopted to obtain the maneuverability indices. The Matlab-based maneuvering simulations were conducted and compared with field experimental data of circular motion test and sinusoidal running test, respectively. The results showed that the trace error was at sub-meter level, which expounds the validity of the obtained maneuvering indices. The proposed Nomoto model maneuverability indices can be used to improve the airboat precise automatic control in paddy field.
  • Teng Zhao, Noboru Noguchi, Liangliang Yang, Kazunobu Ishii, Jun Chen
    Nongye Jixie Xuebao/Transactions of the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery 47 (11) 32 - 37 1000-1298 2016/11/25 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    To overcome the shortages of the developed method for edge detection system based on laser rangefinder (LF), a vision based fast edge information acquiring algorithm for the LF system was proposed. Inverse perspective mapping (IPM) geometrical transform was used to remove the perspective effect on original mature wheat field. The image after IPM transformation was then processed by illumination reduction and contrast enhancement to make the difference between cut and uncut wheat field more evidently, and then transferred into grayscale image. Threshold segmentation method based on histogram was used to convert grayscale image into a binary image, so as to distinguish the cut and uncut wheat. The target points were clustered by adopting cross correlation method on each horizontal scan line in the binary image, and then Hough transform was used to detect the edge line between cut and uncut wheat. The proposed method extended the field of view of the edge detection system based on LF, and owing to the LF system the region of interest area for image processing was well restricted. The results showed an average deviation of 2.35 cm, with standard deviation of 3.26. This edge detector providing satisfied performance under different conditions, was an effective edge detection method, and met the demand of recognition for navigation path in wheat harvesting.
  • Zhao Teng, Noboru Noguchi, Yang Liangliang, Kazunobu Ishii, Chen Jun
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING 9 (2) 21 - 28 1934-6344 2016/03 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research was to develop an uncut crop edge detection system for a combine harvester. A laser rangefinder (LF) was selected as a primary sensor, combined with a pan-tilt unit (PTU) and an inertial measurement unit (IMU). Three-dimensional field information can be obtained when the PTU rotates the laser rangefinder in the vertical plane. A field profile was modeled by analyzing range data. Otsu's method was used to detect the crop edge position on each scanning profile, and the least squares method was applied to fit the uncut crop edge. Fundamental performance of the system was first evaluated under laboratory conditions. Then, validation experiments were conducted under both static and dynamic conditions in a wheat field during harvesting season. To verify the error of the detection system, the real position of the edge was measured by GPS for accuracy evaluation. The results showed an average lateral error of +/- 12 cm, with a Root-Mean-Square Error (RMSE) of 3.01 cm for the static test, and an average lateral error of +/- 25 cm, with an RMSE of 10.15 cm for the dynamic test. The proposed laser rangefinder-based uncut crop edge detection system exhibited a satisfactory performance for edge detection under different conditions in the field, and can provide reliable information for further study.
  • Chi Zhang, Noboru Noguchi, Liangliang Yang
    COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS IN AGRICULTURE 121 269 - 281 0168-1699 2016/02 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Two robot tractors were used in a leader-follower system for agricultural field work. Each of the robots is fully independent and can conduct field work alone. They can also work together to form a certain spatial arrangement during the operation. During the headland turn, to make the best use of headland, the two robots coordinate to turn to next path and do not keep the spatial arrangement. Each robot is simplified as a rectangular zone, and the two robots cooperate and coordinate to turn to the next path without collision. This system is designed for practical application, and the system gains the ability to tolerate most of the disturbances in a real field. Fault tolerant methods in accordance with agricultural work are illustrated to solve the common disturbances from the GPS and the IMU. Field experiments were conducted to determine the effectiveness of the system. The results of the experiments showed that the two robot tractors can work safely together to complete the field work. The average lateral error of the navigation system of the robots was less than 0.04 m, and the efficiency of the leader-follower system was improved by 95.1% compared with that of a conventional single robot. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
  • Yufei Liu, Noboru Noguchi
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 9 (1) 21 - 26 1881-8366 2016/01/01 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research was to develop an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) using global positioning system (GPS) compass for autonomous navigation in a paddy field. The surface vehicle used in the research was a radio-controlled air propeller vessel modified into an unmanned surface vehicle platform. The GPS compass was attached to the top of the USV platform as the navigation sensor to provide the position and heading angle. The USV platform can navigate automatically on predefined pathways. From the trajectory data of line-following navigation measured by a total station, the root mean square (RMS) lateral error from the target path was 0.25 m in a no-wind day. The ultimate goal of the research is to realize autonomous herbicide application and paddy growth monitoring based on the USV platform.
  • Y. Liu, N. Noguchi, K. Ishii, L. Liang
    2016 IEEE/SICE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON SYSTEM INTEGRATION (SII) 906 - 911 2474-2317 2016 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Robotics technology brings innovation for agriculture industry. In order to solve the grain issue and the labor force issue in the world, the smart agriculture is an important approach at present and in the future. In this paper, a new path planning method based on wind direction is proposed for agricultural unmanned boat which is susceptible to the effect of wind. This method could be utilized in an arbitrary convex quadrilateral paddy field or a pond where the agricultural robot boat could navigate automatically. The simulation and field test shows that when the boat does farm work, the new path planning algorithm could cover the whole farm field under the minimum effect of wind.
  • Md. Shaha Nur Kabir, Ming-Zhang Song, Nam-Seok Sung, Sun-Ok Chung, Yong-Joo Kim, Noboru Noguchi, Soon-Jung Hong
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 9 (1) 27 - 35 1881-8366 2016/01/01 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Objective of this research was to evaluate the performance of single and multi-GNSS receivers and investigate the different capability under different modes of the multi-GNSS receiver for positioning assessment under stationary and moving conditions in typical Korean agricultural sites such as open field, orchard, and mountainous area. During stationary tests of the single-GNSS receiver (Model: R100, Hemisphere DGPS) with differential correction, the Twice the Distance Root Mean Square values (2DRMS) values were found as 0.162 m, 0.196 m, and 1.720 m in open field, orchard, and mountainous area, respectively. For multi-GNSS receiver (Model: SIGMA-G3T, JAVAD GNSS Inc.) with Precise Point Positioning (PPP) mode, the 2DRMS values were found as 0.077 m, 0.162 m, and 0.929 m for carrier phase differential (RTK) with fixed ambiguities (pd) with QZSS (Quasi-Zenith Satellite System) signal in open field, orchard, and mountainous area, respectively. During the moving tests of the single-GNSS receiver, the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values were found as 0.168 m, 0.221 m, and 1.372 m in open field, orchard, and mountainous area, respectively. For multi-GNSS receiver with PPP mode, the RMSE values were found as 0.152 m, 0.182 m, and 1.13 m for pd with QZSS signal in open field, orchard, and mountainous area, respectively. Number of satellites tracked by the multi-GNSS receiver was greater than the single-GNSS receiver in all cases. This research provides capability and accuracy of a multi-GNSS receiver and comparison with a single-GNSS, which would be helpful for selecting appropriate receivers and methods in various agricultural conditions.
  • Development and application of a wheel-type robot tractor
    Yang,L., Noguchi, N., Takai,R
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 9 (2) 131 - 140 2016 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Ricardo Ospina, Noboru Noguchi
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 9 (1) 123 - 130 1881-8366 2016/01/01 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This paper describes the methods for estimating a vehicle's dynamic parameters using a Global Positioning System implementing a Real Time Kinematic scheme (RTK-GPS) and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). An RTK-GPS system and an IMU are used to estimate the vehicle's body sideslip angle and then obtain the relation between the tire's lateral forces and slip angles, and also the tire's cornering stiffness. In order to compare the experimental results two vehicle models are described the bicycle geometric model and the bicycle dynamic model. The method of least squares was applied to the experimental data in order to obtain mathematical expressions that account for the nonlinearities of the system. It is shown that the measurements performed can be used to estimate the tire sideslip and the tire cornering stiffness. The experimental results are consistent to the predictions made by the models, which verifies the potential of this method to determine a nonlinear mathematical model.
  • TSUKAMOTO Takayuki, JABER Nizar, KIMURA Yoshiaki, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 農業食料工学会 78 (5) 416 - 423 2188-224X 2016 [Refereed][Not invited]
     

    Biogas is used in gas engine cogeneration to obtain electricity and heat. However, only the biogas produced is stored in the plant. Hence, we developed dual-fuel biogas tractors that can be operated with biogas and diesel. Their basic performance in the steady state was tested. The results of power take-off shaft (PTO) performance tests showed that tractor operation was stable at all engine speeds and under loads. The maximum engine torque and power in the dual-fuel model were higher than the conventional values by 10%. The maximum fuel replacement rate was 86%. NOX and CO2 emissions decreased by 8% and 11%, respectively, in the dual-fuel mode. However, CO and HC emissions increased because excess biogas prevented diesel fuel combustion.

  • TSUKAMOTO Takayuki, JABER Nizar, KIMURA Yoshiaki, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 農業食料工学会 78 (5) 424 - 431 2188-224X 2016 [Refereed][Not invited]
     

    Biogas tractors were developed for agricultural purposes with the aim of partially replacing diesel with biogas. This paper mainly discusses the performance and reduction of fuel consumption of these tractors.

    The results showed that dual-fuel operation reduced diesel consumption in all field tests, while realizing the same working efficiency. The maximum decrease in fuel consumption was 73% in hay rake operation. The maximum decrease in fuel replacement rate was 79% in broadcaster operation. Furthermore, by using a dynamometer to determine the actual engine power and load in field tests, we reproduced the engine speed and estimated the engine load. Finally, the fuel consumption performance of the tractors at actual engine speed and power was determined.

  • Ali Roshanianfard, Noboru Noguchi
    IFAC PAPERSONLINE 49 (16) 155 - 160 2405-8963 2016 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Robotics can play a significant role to increase efficiency and lighten the farmer's load. Despite challenges in the agricultural robotic designs, robots are capable of performing various tasks and changing themselves accordingly, based on specific conditions. To address modern problems in the agricultural field, an agricultural robot is one of the key technologies. Although agricultural robotic is still in the development stage, these particular robots have a bright future ahead. This paper proposes a new 5DOF articulated robotic arm design that would become a solution for heavy crop harvesting like pumpkin and cabbage. The main design process of the device was conceived using 6 stages of Shigley design process. All components were designed, assembled and analyzed by using Solidworks 2014 in compliance with JIS standards. The parts of the system that had dynamic nature were analyzed manually using standard mechanical formulas. Calculations of the workspace, required joint torque, and coordination of mass center position were developed using standard machine design methods. Denavit-Hartenberg method was used to calculate forward and reverse kinematics. To resolve the torque reduction, components were designed by different material and mass center and were compared together. Results showed that total torque in Joints number 1, 2. 3, 4 and 5 were 6.15, 257.35, 103.4, 20.2 and 0.1 N. m respectively with a rotational speed range of 15 60 rpm. Changes in the linkage material and servo motor location improved 29.7% similar to 47.7% and 29.7% similar to 68.9% of the total required torque for each joint. The maximum distance covered by the ann was 1640 mm from the 12 and 1830 mm from the attachment point. According to the feedback received from a reverse kinematics equation algorithm, the fundamental operation of the robot arm had an optimal performance. (C) 2016, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
  • Mengmeng Du, Noboru Noguchi
    IFAC PAPERSONLINE 49 (16) 5 - 9 2405-8963 2016 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Satellite remote sensing has been proved to be an effective way of monitoring crop growth status and yield prediction Recently near -ground remote sensing using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) witnessed wide applications in obtaining field information. In this research, four satellite and eight UAV images were used from early June to the end of July, 2015, which covers two experimental wheat fields; in order to monitor wheat canopy growth status and analyze the correlation among satellite images based normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) with UAV images based visible-band difference vegetation index (VDVI) and ground variable of grain protein contents. The results of relational analysis of NDVI with sampled wheat grain protein content showed that the NDVI related most to the grain protein content at the later stage of wheat growing season, one week prior to harvesting. And the correlation analysis of NDVI with VDVI showed good consistency at the early stage of wheat growing season, with the coefficient of determination R-2=0.77, in regardless of the wheat varieties. (c) 2016, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
  • Zhang,Z., Noguchi, N., Ishii,K
    Journal of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 農業食料工学会事務局 77 (1) 45 - 50 2188-224X 2015 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Development of a Cooperative Working System of a Robot Tractor with a Human-driven Tractor
    Zhang,C, Yang,L, Noguchi,N
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 8 (1) 7 - 12 2015 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Yin Xiang, Noboru Noguchi
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING 7 (5) 14 - 21 1934-6344 2014/10 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The aim of this study was to develop a general-purpose electric off-road robot vehicle by using automatic control technologies. The vehicle prototype used in this study was a commercially-purchased electricity utility vehicle that was designed originally for manual operations. A manipulating unit, an automatic steering system and a speed control system were developed and integrated into a CAN-bus network for operating on functions (forward, reverse, park or stop), realizing desired steering angles and maintaining a constant speed, respectively, in the mode of automation. An autonomous navigation system based on RTK-GPS and IMU was used to evaluate the performance of the newly developed off-road robot. Field tests showed that the maximum error in speed control was 0.29 m/s and 0.22 m/s for speed tests and autonomous runs, respectively. The lateral offset was less than 10 cm in terms of straight paths, indicating that the automatic steering control system was of good performance.
  • Liangliang Yang, Noboru Noguchi
    IFAC PAPERSONLINE 47 (3) 11571 - 11576 2405-8963 2014 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This article described the development and utilization of a CAN-bus based robot tractor. A RTK-GPS and an IMU were utilized as a position and a posture sensor for the development of a navigation system. The path planning and navigation control method were described in this article. Three field tests were conducted to show the performance and stability of the robot on straight path, logged path following crop rows and long time work. The RMS value of lateral and heading errors of three tests were 0.05 m and 0.6 degree, 0.02 m and 0.77 degree, 0.04 m and 0.75 degree, respectively. The results revealed the CAN bus based robot tractor has high and stable navigation accuracy. The accuracy was acceptable for all tests.
  • Yufei Liu, Noboru Noguchi, Takeshi Yusa
    IFAC PAPERSONLINE 47 (3) 11553 - 11558 2405-8963 2014 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research was to develop an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) platform for autonomous navigation in the paddy field. The surface vehicle used in this research was a radio controlled air propeller vessel that had been modified into an unmanned surface vehicle platform. A GP S compass system was attached to the top of the USV platform as the navigation system to provide the position and heading angle. The USV platform can autonomously navigate to the predefined navigation map. From the GPS trajectory data of the map based navigation experiment, the in-system root mean square (RMS) lateral error from the target path was observed to be less than 0.45 m, and the in-system RMS heading error was 4.4 degree or less. The final goal of the research is going to realize the autonomous weeding, intelligent fertilization or paddy growth management based on this USV platform.
  • Chi Zhang, Liangliang Yang, Noboru Noguchi
    IFAC PAPERSONLINE 47 (3) 11559 - 11564 2405-8963 2014 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Automated agricultural equipment such as a robot tractor has been developed to solve the problem of agriculture labor force shortage. A human-driven tractor following a robot system is useful for saving time on a large-scale farm. In this kind of system, a robot tractor does farm work while a human-driven tractor is following and doing a different operation. The human operator can control the robot through a controller. To monitor work conditions of the leading robot tractor, four cameras are mounted on the robot tractor, and images from the cameras are sent to the human-driven tractor through a video transmission system. The human operator can check the surroundings of the robot from a monitor. Also, a laser scanner is mounted in the front of the robot for safety. The results of an experiment using the system showed that the precision of the robot tractor, which had an RMS error of about 0.03 m, was better than that of an experienced tractor operator, for which the RMS error was about 0.04 m, while the range of lateral errors of the human-driven tractor improved from 0.25 m to 0.20 m by following the robot.
  • Yufei Liu, Noboru Noguchi, Kazunobu Ishii
    IFAC PAPERSONLINE 47 (3) 4435 - 4440 2405-8963 2014 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research was to explore the use of data information of a low-cost IMU to provide an attitude angle with acceptable accuracy for agricultural robot. This work was an attempt to create attitude angle estimation system via sensor fusion method based on a triple gyroscope and a triaxis accelerometer in this low-cost IMU. The used algorithm processed and integrated the data from the gyroscope and the accelerometer using a mean filter and a Kalman filter. Under this algorithm, the experiment data showed that the estimation precision was improved effectively. It can solve noise jamming, and be especially suitable for the robot which is sensitive to the payload and cost effective.
  • Liangliang Yang, Noboru Noguchi
    IFAC PAPERSONLINE 47 (3) 11577 - 11582 2405-8963 2014 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    A 2D laser scanner was used for obstacle detection for autonomous vehicles for its high accuracy at both indoor and outdoor environment on the measurement of distance. Traditionally, the obstacle detection method was depended on the distance from an object to a laser scanner, and an obstacle was defined if the measured distance was less than a threshold. A shortage of the traditional obstacle detection method for a robot tractor is that a low obstacle cannot be detected when the height of the obstacle is lower than the height of the scantling plane of the 2D laser scanner. In this article, obstacle detection method using two 2D laser scanners is discussed. One laser scanner is mounted at the front and the other is mounted at the rear of the vehicle in order to cover the whole surroundings of the vehicle. The laser scanner was mounted look-at-down in order to detect a low obstacle. A test was carried out at an outdoor environment to verify the developed safety system. The test results indicate the developed system could detect obstacles with accuracy around 10 cm.
  • Development of a Crawler-type Robot Tractor using RTK-GPS and IMU
    Takai,R, Yang,L, Noguchi,N
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 7 (4) 143 - 147 2014 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Ze Zhang, Noboru Noguchi, Kazunobu Ishii, Liangliang Yang
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 7 (2) 91 - 96 1881-8366 2014 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this study was to optimize the control parameters of a robot combine harvester so that it can run along a straight line with minimal oscillation and minimal lateral error. A kinematic model was established by analyzing the relations among steering, control lever angle and performance of the vehicle. Based on the kinematic model, optimizations of a steering controller were conducted so as to obtain optimized control parameters. The optimized control parameters were verified by field experiments. In a stable state, the RMS value of lateral error was 0.025 m with a maximum of 0.066 m. Thus, the effectiveness of the method for optimization of control parameters of the robot combine harvester was verified. © 2014, Asian Agricultural and Biological Engineering Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights.
  • Development of a Robot Combine Harvester
    Zhang,Z., Noguchi, N., Ishii,K
    Journal of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 77 (1) 45 - 50 2014 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Xiang Yin, Noboru Noguchi, Jongmin Choi
    COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS IN AGRICULTURE 98 17 - 24 0168-1699 2013/10 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this study was to develop a target recognition and following system for a field robot. The platform used in this study was an electric vehicle that had been modified into an automatic vehicle. A 3D camera was attached in the front of the vehicle to deliver depth and grayscale information on the environment. The degrees of correspondence between objects present in consecutive frames were calculated using their spatial descriptors and grayscale features. A correspondence assigner was designed to recognize the same objects in consecutive frames, and their locations could be acquired at the same time. Based on a pursuit strategy, an appropriate steering angle was calculated for the robot vehicle to move towards the target. A PID controller was used to determine appropriate vehicle speed for maintaining a certain distance from the target. Field tests were conducted to evaluate robustness and performance of the system. Results showed that the robot vehicle was correctly and effectively guided to follow the target while preventing collisions with disturbances. RMS errors were 1.0 m and 1.3 degrees in terms of space and deflection angle, respectively, when following a target that moved in a straight line at an average speed of 1.1 m/s. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.
  • Yosuke Matsuo, Osamuo Yukumoto, Satoshi Yamamoto, Noboru Noguchi, Yoshiyuki Hara
    Japan Agricultural Research Quarterly 47 (2) 153 - 164 0021-3551 2013/04 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    A tilling robot capable of unmanned rotary tilling with the XNAV navigation system was examined to improve and expand the adaptability of the robot operation. Firstly, as an effective and safe method of using the robot, we proposed a method whereby one operator manually operated a conventional tractor while engaged in the unmanned operation of a robot tractor. As a result of the rotary tilling test, to which the use method was applied, the robot operation was performed without trouble, and one operator could perform the operation with efficiency about 1.8 times superiorto manned operation. Secondly, as an application to farm work other than rotary tilling, operation software for seeding and soil paddling was created based on operation software for rotary tilling. From the results of robot wheat seeding field tests, it was proved that the operation could be successfully performed without trouble and that the conventional two-person work could be done by one operator. The robot soil paddling was also successfully performed with efficient operation paths compared to manned operation.
  • Jongmin Choi, Xiang Yin, Noboru Noguchi
    IFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline) 4 (1) 103 - 108 1474-6670 2013 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this study was to develop an autonomous navigation system for a combine harvester using a laser scanner. The laser scanner was attached to the top of the harvester cabin through a pan tilt unit that tilted the laser scanner in the vertical plane to obtain 3D information on the field. A field profile was modeled by investigating the spatial distribution of range data measured by the laser scanner in a soybean field. A crop row localization method used a cross correlation algorithm to calculate the relative position and direction between the vehicle and crop rows. Field experiments were conducted in a row-planted soybean field during harvesting season. Results showed that the combine harvester had RMS errors of 0.02 m and 0.8 degrees in terms of lateral offset and heading deflection, respectively, in detecting the soybean row localized between cut and uncut areas under static conditions. The corresponding RMS errors were 0.07 m and 3 degrees when the combine harvester was autonomously guided to perform soybean harvesting along crop rows at a speed of 0.97 m/s in the field. Copyright © 2013 IFAC.
  • Xiang Yin, Noboru Noguchi
    IFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline) 4 (1) 109 - 114 1474-6670 2013 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this study was to develop a target following system for a field robot. The platform used in this study was an electric vehicle that had been modified into a robot vehicle. A 3D camera was attached to the front of the vehicle to deliver depth and grayscale information on the environment. Based on a pursuit strategy, an appropriate steering angle was calculated for the robot vehicle to move towards the target. A PID controller was used to determine appropriate vehicle speed for maintaining a certain distance from the target. Field tests were conducted to evaluate robustness and performance of the newly developed system. Results showed that the robot vehicle was effectively guided to follow the target. RMS errors were 1.0 m and 1.3 degrees in terms of space and deflection angle, respectively, when following a target that moved in a straight line at an average speed of 1.1 m/s. Copyright © 2013 IFAC.
  • Development of a laser scanner-based navigation system for a combine harvester
    Choi,J, Yin,X, Yang,L, Noguchi,N
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 7 (1) 7 - 13 2013 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Vali Rasooli Sharabian, Noboru Noguchi, Kazunobu Ishi
    Environmental Control in Biology 51 (3) 105 - 112 1880-554X 2013 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    In order to select appropriate vegetation indices for winter wheat, field experiments with four levels of N-fertilizer (0, 30, 60, and 90 kg ha -1) in two repetitions were conducted for three years. Hyper-spectral reflectance data using a portable field spectroradiometer (351 to 2,500 nm) were recorded from 10 am to 2 pm under cloudless conditions at two different growth stages of winter wheat. All two-band and three-band combinations of several vegetation indices were subsequently calculated in an algorithm for determining linear regression analysis against SPAD value, protein content, and grain yield. R square matrices were used to make contour plots and 3-D scatters. Using overlaying in analysis tools of ArcMap the between first and second year results, a number of common hot spots with strong correlations were revealed. The selected hot spots were validated with the dataset of the third year to choose the best vegetation indices for crop variable estimations.
  • Baofeng Su, Noboru Noguchi
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 6 (2) 48 - 53 1881-8366 2013 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This paper describes a new method for extracting the agricultural land use pattern around the Miyajimanuma inland wetland based on remote sensing imagery. A land parcel and particle swarm optimization (PSO) K-means-based minimum distance classification (MDC) (LP-PSOK-MDC) method was developed. This method includes three steps: 1) considering the diversity of crop planting and growth state, a training sample pre-classification-based MDC method was developed 2) the land parcels information was extracted by using watershed transform algorithm finally, 3) pixels in the same land parcel were re-classified. Results of the study suggest that using this method the classification result was easily up to 96 %, much better than results obtained by using traditional supervised classification methods such as MDC and unsupervised classification method.
  • RASOOLI Sharabian Vali, NOGUCHI Noboru, HAN-YA Issei, ISHII Kazunobu
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food Asian Agricultural and Biological Engineering Association 6 (3) 118 - 127 1881-8366 2013 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The usefulness of a ground-based sensor embedded on tractor for monitoring the growth of winter wheat using a two plant nutrition active sensors (CropSpec) and RTK-GPS was investigated in this study. In order to consider the reliability of the results, the winter wheat was cultivated in farm land of Hokkaido University. Four levels of N fertilizer were applied to make differences in crop conditions, and growth information was acquired at four growth stages. A strong correlation (R2 > 0.70) for Nitrogen Sufficiency Index (S1 value) and ground truth data was found in the second stage of data collection. Also, a strong relationship (R2 > 0.90) between in-season estimation (INSE) of S1 value and other vegetation indices acquired using a spectroradiometer as a passive sensor demonstrated good performance of CropSpec. However, for diagnosis of crop growth condition for variable rate application, use of the S1 value without elimination of different measurement times is recommended.
  • YIN Xiang, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu
    Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food Asian Agricultural and Biological Engineering Association 6 (2) 41 - 47 1881-8366 2013 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The aim of this study was to develop an obstacle avoidance system using a 3D camera. A noise filtering algorithm was used to detect corrupted pixels and a background removal method was used to distinguish obstacles from the background. A clustering algorithm based on a 2D histogram back-projected obstacle pixels onto the ground plane for image segmentation and analysis. Experiments showed that this system had a maximum error of 10 cm and an RMS error of 5.6 cm for position accuracy under static conditions and an RMS error of 7.1 cm in distance detection under moving conditions. Field tests showed that the developed system could effectively detect obstacles in real-time.
  • Liangliang Yang, Noboru Noguchi
    COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS IN AGRICULTURE 89 116 - 125 0168-1699 2012/11 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    It is critical to detect and identify obstacles for safe operation of robot tractors. This study focused on human detection using an omni-directional stereo vision (OSV). The Lucas-Kanade optical flow detection method was used to detect human in a panoramic image. A 3D panoramic image that was reconstructed from stereo rectified images using the sum of squared differences (SSDs) method was used to locate the position of a human. To evaluate the performance of the developed human detection method, two RTK-GPSs were used to investigate the accuracy of the detection method under stationary and motion conditions of a robot tractor. The results of field experiments indicated that a human could be detected successfully under both given conditions in the daytime. The RMS error of measured distance was less than half a meter compared with the reference distance measured by the RTK-GPSs. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
  • Yosuke Matsuo, Osamu Yukumoto, Noboru Noguchi
    JARQ-JAPAN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY 46 (4) 295 - 303 0021-3551 2012/10 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The tilling robot mainly comprises: a robot vehicle called ROBOTRA, which is remodeled to control parts of commercially available tractors automatically, a navigation system called XNAV, which detects and outputs robot positioning information using an auto-tracking type surveying device, and a controller with read operation software to execute path planning and control the robot vehicle. The robot has ability almost equivalent to that of customary manned-driven tractors and can perform unmanned rotary tilling on a rectangular field. To improve its adaptability during unmanned operation, we remodeled it so that it could perform path operations differing from customary rotary tilling and performed field tests. We proposed two different path operation methods: "diagonal operation"; performing returning straight operations diagonally against the longer side of the field; and "round operation"; performing straight operations parallel to the four sides in the entire field area, and developed a software package for the same. Following field tests using the software, we confirmed that favorable unmanned operation could be achieved through both methods.
  • 松尾陽介, 行本修, 山本聡史, 野口伸
    農業機械化研究所研究報告 生物系特定産業技術研究推進機構農業機械化研究所 0 (41) 96P - 88 1341-0148 2012/03 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    ロボットトラクタ(以下,ロボット)は,市販トラクタの各部を自動制御できるように改造したロボット車両と,自動追尾型測量装置を用いてロボットの位置情報や方位情報を検出・出力する航法システムXNAV,および経路計画やロボット車両の制御を行う作業ソフトを読み込んだコントローラにより主に構成される。ロボットは,慣行の有人運転作業と同程度の作業能率,作業精度で矩形ほ場のロータリ耕作業を無人で行う性能を有している。ロボットの適応性拡大や効率的な利活用方法の研究として,ロータリ耕作業とは異なる経路による作業や播種作業,代かき作業を行える作業ソフトの開発,及びロボット作業と有人運転作業を同時並行で行う2台同時作業法の提案を行い,ほ場作業試験によりそれらの開発ソフトの性能や作業法の効果等を確認した。2台同時作業法は,オペレータ1人で従来型トラクタによる慣行作業の約1.8倍の能率でほ場作業が行え,ロボットを有効かつ安全に活用する作業法と評価できた。開発したロボットの性能は,慣行の有人運転作業と同程度の作業能率,作業精度で各種の農作業が行えることを確認し,省力効果や取扱い性,信頼性,作業安全の点についても実用利用できるレベルに近いものとすることができた。
  • Hassan Masoudi, Reza Alimardani, Mahmoud Omid, Seyed Saeid Mohtasebi, Noboru Noguchi
    SENSORS AND MATERIALS 24 (3) 115 - 126 0914-4935 2012 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    In this study, we have evaluated the ability of ultrasonic sensors to produce guidance signals for greenhouse application robots. First, one high-quality ultrasonic sensor was selected and some basic experiments were carried out. Experimental results showed that with predetermined internal parameters, the accuracy of the selected sensor was good for distances between 15 and 215 cm and angles between 0 and 30 degrees. The maximum width of view of each sensor was 17.15 cm for flat surfaces and 33.20 cm for round surfaces. From these results, the final configuration of sensors around the robot was determined. With a designed averaging algorithm, it was possible to calculate the averages of orientation and position with high accuracy from ultrasonic sensor outputs. Also, from comparison with data from reference sensors, the maximum error and root mean square error (RMSE) for orientation and position were 11.23 degrees, 4.036 degrees and 3 cm, 0.714 cm, respectively.
  • Yutaka Kaizu, Munetaka Iio, Hiroyuki Yamada, Noboru Noguchi
    BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING 109 (4) 338 - 347 1537-5110 2011/08 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    An unmanned airboat for mapping the water quality of shallow (<1 m) mire pools where aquatic weeds flourish was developed. A differential global positioning system receiver and a global positioning system compass were used as navigation sensors. The airboat was designed for automatic operation. Using the boat, parameters such as temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, electrical conductivity, turbidity and chlorophyll-a of the water were measured in a 26-ha mire pool in Hokkaido, Japan. To determine the appropriate sampling-grid size, 10-m spacing linear sampling was conducted, and the spatial variability of the mire pool characteristics was determined using a semivariogram. Results from the spherical model fit to the empirical semivariogram revealed spatial fluctuations in the water-quality parameters on the scale of 100-140 m. Because the size of the grid must be smaller than this scale, a second survey of water samples in the pool was carried out using a grid size of 40 m x 40 m. At each target point, a water-quality sensor unit was lowered from the boat. The survey of the entire grid area took approximately 231 min, during which time 130 points were sampled. The precision of the sampling points was within 2.6 m. The maximum speed and yaw rate of the airboat were 1.2 m s(-1) and 48 degrees s(-1), respectively. The resulting maps provided fine-scale distribution of water quality. (C) 2011 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
  • Akira Mizushima, Kazunobu Ishii, Noboru Noguchi, Yousuke Matsuo, Renfu Lu
    COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS IN AGRICULTURE 76 (2) 198 - 204 0168-1699 2011/05 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research was to develop a low-cost attitude sensor for agricultural vehicles. The attitude sensor was composed of three vibratory gyroscopes and two inclinometers. A sensor fusion algorithm was developed to estimate tilt angles (roll and pitch) by least-squares method. In the algorithm, the drift error of the gyroscopes was estimated using the inclinometers. In addition to tilt angles, the attitude sensor also estimated the absolute heading angle and position with inclination error correction by integrating a GPS. Tests were conducted on a flat field, a sloping ground and a bumpy road. Results showed that the attitude sensor was able to estimate the roll angle with the maximum root mean square error of 0.43 degrees, the pitch angle with 0.61 degrees and the heading angle with 0.64 degrees. Moreover, the attitude sensor dramatically improved the positioning accuracy from 25.9 cm to 3.0 cm in the sloping ground test and from 8.4 cm to 3.7 cm in the bumpy road test. The proposed technology used in the attitude sensor will help to develop advanced agricultural applications. Published by Elsevier B.V.
  • Issei Han-ya, Kazunobu Ishii, Noboru Noguchi
    Environmental Control in Biology 48 (2) 51 - 58 1883-0986 2010 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this study was to develop a reliable field monitoring system combining helicopter-based and satellite-based remote sensing. In this research, multi-spectral imageries were used that was taken by SPOT5, QuickBird-2 and helicopter. These imageries were synchronously taken. As every vision covers the same wavelength range and takes same objects, the color information of the satellite and helicopter images would be integrated. The relation of the information on NDVI was examined. There was a high correlation between satellite-based NDVI and helicopter-based NDVT, The R2 value was 0.81 between helicopter-based NDVI and Quickbird-2 satellite-based NDVI. Therefore, it was possible to do revision of the color information on the relative satellite imageries in using helicopter imageries. Using these color information, the field status (moisture content of wheat ear) can be estimated. Combined Helicopter-based NDVI and satellite-based NDVI, it became possible to estimate the wide range in high accuracy and high efficiency.
  • Barawid Jr.,O.C, Noguchi,N
    Journal of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery 農業機械学会事務局 72 (3) 243 - 250 0285-2543 2010 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • WAKABAYASHI Sohei, JABER Nizar, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 72 (3) 268 - 275 0285-2543 2010 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Biogas made from organic waste, has been used for various applications, including engines. Feeding biogas into the intake manifold of compression ignition engine reduces diesel consumption from one side but on the other side, it increases CO emission and BSHC (Break Specific Heat Consumption) during low loads. This research studies the characteristics of dual-fuel tractor engines using different biogas control methods. Biogas feeding was controlled using 3D-look-up tables optimized for three different objectives. Engine performances as well as emissions were measured and a field test simulation was made.
    The dual-fuel engines have almost same power and torque characteristics as diesel engines. Emission tests results showed that the optimized biogas supply maps were attained the research objectives. The best BSHC curve gave the lowest energy consumption, and diesel consumption was minimized by best reduction map. Field simulation test estimated possible results of actual operations powered by the dual-fuel tractor.
  • 半谷一晴, 石井一暢, 野口 伸
    Papers on environmental information science 環境情報科学センター 23 155 - 160 0389-6633 2009 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • 速水敦郎, 姜 太煥, 海津 裕, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 71 (5) 60 - 66 2009 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • 西野邦彦, 宮田雄介, 澁谷幸憲, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 71 (5) 88 - 94 2009 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Teimourlou,R.F, Noguchi,N
    Journal of Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery 71 (4) 43 - 51 2009 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • Jaber,N, Walabayashi,S, Tsukamoto,T, Noguchi,N
    Journal of Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery 71 (4) 74 - 82 2009 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • MATSUO Yosuke, YUKUMOTO Osamu, YAMAMOTO Satoshi, NOGUCHI Noboru, HARA Yoshiyuki
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 71 (3) 85 - 93 0285-2543 2009 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Tilling robot can perform unmanned rotary tilling at a practical level. At first, to utilize the robot effectively, we suggested an application in which one operator manually operates the usual tractor while causing the robot to perform unmanned operation. Second, to apply the robot to other work, operation software for "seeding" and "soil puddling" were made based on software for rotary tilling. In a field test of the first application, one operator could perform tilling efficiently, approximately 1.8 times the manual operation. In field tests of the second application, one operator could execute wheat seeding precisely with saving labor. The unmanned soil puddling could be performed more efficiently than by conventional manual operation.
  • BARAWID Oscar C. Jr., FARROKHI TEIMOURLOU Rahman, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 70 (6) 76 - 84 0285-2543 2008 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The research objective was to develop an automatic guidance system in a real-time coconut field application using a laser scanner. Seven methods were used in this research, data and information gathering, tree row recognition using Hough transform, masking method to get the ROI (region-of-interest), simulated coconut environment, SMA (simple moving average), steering control algorithm, and experimental test runs. This research dealt with the recognition of tree rows as a straight line, to be followed by the robot tractor in real-time coconut field straight path navigation.
  • YOKOBORI Jun, NIWA Katsuhisa, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 70 (5) 92 - 100 0285-2543 2008 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This study aims at improving the sensing efficiency of field information by reducing the number of required images. Single whole field image by tilted image sensor is the best method. The possibility of image acquisition by changing the tilt angle of sensor was therefore investigated. The acquired images were transformed to ground coordinates with a projective transformation. Then, the wheat logging map was generated as one of crop growth maps.
    The results suggested that the adopted projective transformation using four corner points on the field was effective for geometrical transformation. It was concluded that the wheat logging map generated by the discriminate function highly coincided with the actual wheat logging situation.
  • FARROKHI TEIMOURLOU Rahman, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 70 (5) 69 - 76 0285-2543 2008 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    In path planning of autonomous agricultural vehicles, obstacles detection and identification, and taking appropriate collision avoidance measures are critical for safe operation. As such, the objectives of this research are to detect the hay bales in an image, and to estimate the position of a hay bale with an omnidirectional camera. Approximately 90% of bales within the 40-m maximum detection distance could be identified using developed image processing technique. Then, the estimation of hay bale's position was further improved based on local discriminate analysis. The estimation of the hay bales distance from the camera generated a root mean squares (RMS) error of 1.1m; it was concluded that this accuracy was more than sufficient to enable the autonomous navigation of a robot tractor in the meadow.
  • JABER Nizar, TSUKAMOTO Takayuki, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 70 (3) 97 - 105 0285-2543 2008 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Using biogas to partially replace diesel fuel in agriculture tractors seems a good solution to reduce greenhouse gases and other pollutants. For this reason, a research project to convert a tractor to dual-fuel operation was initiated; this paper's specific aim was to develop a control algorithm feeding biogas to the engine's intake manifold. The effect of biogas addition on engine performance, focusing on break specific heat consumption and fuel replacement rates, was first studied. Then several load estimation methods were assessed and the Manifold Absolute Pressure (MAP) sensor was chosen as a main load detector. Finally, a prototype algorithm was built upon an engine control unit and was tested. The algorithm was able to change biogas flow with engine speed and load, without knock and misfire.
  • MATSUO Yosuke, YUKUMOTO Osamu, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 70 (3) 82 - 88 0285-2543 2008 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Tilling Robot can perform unmanned rotary tilling at a practical level. To improve the robot's adaptability to a variety of fields and operations, the operation overlap width and the path sequence were made variable in the unmanned operation procedure. New procedures of "diagonal operation", in which the robot returns in a straight path diagonal to the field orientation, and "round operation", in which the robot operates the whole field in straight paths parallel to each of the four field borders, have been discussed, and their operation software has been developed. Field tests confirmed that the unmanned operations with these procedures were successful.
  • KANG Tae-Hwan, YOKOTA Masahiko, ISHII Kazunobu, KAIZU Yutaka, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 70 (3) 65 - 73 0285-2543 2008 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This research used the laser scanner mounted on the robot tractor to gather terrain information of a field, aiming to develop the new-mode field surveying system with high efficiency and high accuracy. The mounted laser scanner was scanning within 4, 8, and 12m-width from the center of the tractor, when the robot tractor was autonomously run on navigation paths with 2m space in the field. The vehicle locations and terrain information were simultaneously measured and recorded. In the case of scanning 4m-width from the tractor center line it has an average error of 4.3cm; for 8m-width the average error was 5.6cm; and for 12m-width the average error was 5.0cm. Therefore, it was concluded that the developed system has high accuracy and high efficiency for surveying the topography of the field.
  • MATSUO Yosuke, YUKUMOTO Osamu, NOGUCHI Noboru, HAMADA Yasuyuki
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 70 (2) 104 - 112 0285-2543 2008 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Functions of self-diagnosis and abnormality alarming were added to the Tilling Robot employing the XNAV navigation system to assure the reliability and the safety of unmanned operation. The self-diagnosis function confirms the normality of the navigation data acquisition and the robot's setting and actions before unmanned operation. The abnormality alarming function checks the states of the navigation data acquisition and the robot's operation during unmanned operation. When the self-diagnosis or the abnormality alarming function detects any abnormalities, correction and recovery to normal states are accomplished with man-robot communications. These functions were confirmed to operate as designed by the test with abnormal states.
  • TSUKAMOTO Takayuki, JABER Nizar, WAKABAYASHI Souhei, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 70 (2) 113 - 119 0285-2543 2008 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Biogas generated from the digestion of organic wastes has been regarded as a potential fuel for various applications, many of them involving engines. This research studies the effect of feeding Biogas into the intake manifold of a single cylinder diesel engine, concentrating on the emissions. In fact, a four (4) kW single cylinder diesel engine with 0.309L displacement was run on diesel alone, and then fed three biogas rates (5, 10 and 15L/min) with three different methane concentrations of approximately 100%, 60% and 45%. The concentrations of nitrogen oxides, unburned hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in exhaust gas were measured while smoke were estimated using an opacity meter.
    The effect of adding pure methane (100%) into the engine conformed to studies dealing with CNG-diesel engines. Decreased smoke and nitrogen oxides emissions were indeed observed along an increase in carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons.
    In terms of emissions, the biogas injection into the engine caused higher unburned hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide levels in exhaust gases; it also reduced nitrogen oxides and smoke. Due to the higher hydrogen concentration in methane as compared to diesel, the carbon dioxide emission was slightly decreased. Interestingly, since the carbon dioxide resulting from methane burning recycles into the biomass, the greenhouse warming effect of engine operation is reduced by more than half.
    This research proved that biogas injection into diesel engine not only reduces diesel consumption, but also limits environment pollution by decreasing greenhouse gases.
  • YOKOBORI J.
    Journal of Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery 70 (1) 55 - 64 0285-2543 2008 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • R. Sugiura, N. Noguchi, K. Ishii
    BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING 96 (3) 301 - 313 1537-5110 2007/03 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    A system based on a thermal camera was developed for monitoring soil water status. This study used a thermal camera to take images of a field from a low-altitude helicopter. Thermal infrared energy captured by cameras tends to include errors because of atmospheric effects. This means that the image must be corrected for atmospheric transmissivity. The transmissivity can be determined from the ambient temperature, the humidity and the distance between the target object and the sensor. A method for correcting the image was developed using a principle of thermal imaging. The imaging accuracy was improved by the correction method. Remote-sensing experiments using an unmanned helicopter were conducted at an agricultural field. The experimental field was a paddy field with uniform soil quality, and the images of bare soil in the field were obtained at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on the same day. The correlation between the thermal image temperature and soil water content was evaluated. The determination coefficient between water content and temperature at 10 a.m. was 0.69 and that at 3 p.m. was 0.64. The difference in temperature between the two images was examined. The determination coefficient between water content and temperature difference was 0.42. Finally, a map of ground surface water content was generated using the captured image obtained at 10 a.m. The thermal imagery was found to be useful in determining within-field variability in ground surface soil moisture status. (c) 2006 IAgrE. All rights reserved Published by Elsevier Ltd.
  • Oscar C. Barawid, Akira Mizushima, Kazunobu Ishii, Noboru Noguchi
    BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING 96 (2) 139 - 149 1537-5110 2007/02 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this study was to develop an automatic guidance system capable of navigating an autonomous vehicle travelling between tree rows in a real-time application. The study focused solely on straight line recognition of the tree rows using a laser scanner as a navigation sensor. A 52 kW agricultural tractor was used as the platform on which the laser scanner was mounted. A Hough transform was used as the algorithm to recognise the tree row. An auto-regression method eliminated the white Gaussian noise in the laser scanner data. A calibration method was used to select the offset position of the laser scanner and to correct the heading and lateral error evaluation. An appropriate speed for tractor was also determined. By obtaining an accuracy of 0.11 m lateral error and 1-5 degrees heading error, it was possible to navigate the robot tractor autonomously between the orchard row crops. (c) 20,06 IAgrE. All rights reserved Published by Elsevier Ltd.
  • JABER Nizar, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 69 (1) 89 - 98 0285-2543 2007/01/01 
    Farm based waste digestion plants return higher profit if the emanating methane (CH4) rich biogas is purified and used in agricultural vehicles, as it is used to generate heat and electricity. For this reason, ignition process of diesel engines, the prime movers in farms, was thoroughly reviewed because it directly influences the resulting toxic emissions. Methane, coming from natural gas or biogas, when fed into these engines along with diesel, was found to reduce nitrogen oxides and particulate matter but increased knocking at high loads and misfire at light loads. Several solutions have been studied all over the world and some reached the market stage; however many challenges still face the advance of this technology.
  • BARAWID Oscar C. Jr., ISHII Kazunobu, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 69 (1) 59 - 67 0285-2543 2007 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this study is to develop a calibration method to get the exact position of the 2-dimensional laser scanner mounted at the front of an automated vehicle from a reference coordinate system before the automatic navigation in an orchard application. The research is limited only in calibrating a 2-dimensional laser scanner that gathers distance and angle data of the objects in front of it. The methods used in this research are Hough transform, Euler rotation theorem and LSM (least squares method). The calibration results identified the exact attachment position of the laser scanner with respect to the vehicle coordinates. Finally, field test runs for autonomous guidance with developed calibration was conducted to confirm the travel accuracy improvement. The accuracy of both lateral and heading error for calibrated sensor was higher than run of subjected calibration.
  • KANG Tae-Hwan, SIRAMIZU Hirokazu, ISHII Kazunobu, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 69 (3) 51 - 58 0285-2543 2007 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research is to develop a field improvement based on methodology for working chracteristics on harvesting, and GIS maps using terrain information. To generate a GIS map based on the working chracteristics on harvesting and terrain information, location of the field is essential; therefore a real time kinematical global positioning system (RTK-GPS) was used to provide terrain information and also the vehicle's absolute positions. An inertial measurement unit (IMU) was used to provide posture (yaw, pitch and roll) of the tractor. The system was built on a robot tractor modified a 56kW tractor. As the result, the area where work characteristics have to be improved was identified automatically by the discriminant analysis using explanation variable of synthetic vector and inclination angls.
  • Noguchi Noboru
    tits Japan Science Support Foundation 11 (2) 38 - 41 1342-3363 2006
  • HARA Yoshiyuki, TAKENAKA Hideyuki, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 68 (2) 88 - 93 0285-2543 2006 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Boom sprayer is usually used in Hokkaido for chemical application of upland crops. We developed the application rate control system of boom sprayer in proportion to working speed by using RTK-GPS and the flow rate sensor. And an automatic boom opening and closing system, which works at every start and end of spraying was also developed for autonomous spraying. Using this sprayer and the robot tractor equipped with RTK-GPS and CAN-BUS, we did the verification of autonomous spraying system in sugar beet field. The autonomous running of tractor, application control system and boom control system of sprayer was smoothly activated. Thus, this system can enable an autonomous spraying.
  • SUGIURA Ryo, FUKAGAWA Tomohisa, HARA Yoshiyuki, ISHII Kazunobu, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 68 (2) 42 - 49 0285-2543 2006 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The main objective of this research is to develop a remote sensing system that can determine crop status using a multi-spectral imaging sensor (MSIS). To detect crop information, high image quality is required under various ambient light conditions. Useful data was obtained by adjusting CCD gain before sensing and controlling exposure time for each capture. The unplanted ridges in the image makes the error of the vegetation cover rate. Therefore, the algorithm which can automatically segment the unplanted ridge area was developed. In this research, the images were obtained at flag leaves stage and flowering stage. The crop statuses were estimated by the multiple-linear regression of the sensing data and ground-truth data (SPAD value, crop height, stem number, dry weight, nitrogen contents and yield). As a result of the analysis, the coefficients of determination at the flag leaves stage were 0.72 (SPAD value), 0.59 (crop height), 0.58 (stem umber), 0.59 (dry weight), 0.62 (nitrogen contents) and 0.61 (yield). The coefficients of determination of SPAD value, nitrogen contents and yield at the flowering stage were 0.72, 0.62 and 0.54. However, the other parameters didn't show any correlation. Finally, the GIS maps regarding crop status were generated for the experimental field.
  • ISHII Kazunobu, SUGIURA Ryo, FUKAGAWA Tomohisa, NOGUCHI Noboru, SHIBATA Yoichi
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 68 (2) 33 - 41 0285-2543 2006 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of the study is to construct a sensing system for precision farming. A Multi Spectral Imaging Sensor (MSIS), which can obtain three images (G, R and NIR) simultaneously, was used for detecting growth status of plants. The sensor was mounted on an unmanned helicopter. An image processing method for acquiring information of crop status with high accuracy was developed. Crop parameters that were measured include SPAD, leaf height, and stems number. Both direct seeding variety and transplant variety of paddy rice were adopted in the research. The result of a field test showed that crop status of both varieties could be detected with sufficient accuracy to apply to precision farming.
  • Tae-Hwan Kang, Ryo Sugiura, Noboru Noguchi
    Environmental Control in Biology 44 (3) 207 - 214 1883-0986 2006 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    In this research, growth information of wheat was acquired using multi-spectral imaging sensor (MSIS) mounted on an unmanned helicopter and application of variable rate fertilizer based on this growth information. Growth information of the wheat obtained from normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) value. NDVI value was calculated by image processing of the acquired image. Calculated NDVI was used to generate a map. This map was used for the application of the variable rate fertilizer in the wheat field. Moreover, the growth variation of the wheat by variable rate fertilizer was analyzed. The variability of SPAD was low before the variable rate fertilizer. Comparison of variable rate and uniform rate fertilizer has been carried out. The cross-correlation coefficient of SPAD and NDVI was low in the variable rate fertilizer compare with uniform rate fertilizer section. There is no correlation before and after variable rate fertilizer because the variable rate fertilizer influences the SPAD and NDVI of the wheat. The protein variability of the variable rate fertilizer section is less than the uniform rate fertilizer section. The yield in variable rate fertilizer section that has been fertilized with nitrogenous fertilizer of 1.7 N-kg 10 acre is almost the same with the uniform rate fertilizer section.
  • M Kise, Q Zhang, N Noguchi
    TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASAE 48 (3) 1269 - 1278 0001-2351 2005/05 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The capability of detecting and identifying obstacles on the expected path and taking appropriate collision avoidance actions automatically is critical for safe operation of autonomous agricultural vehicles. This article presents an obstacle detection and identification algorithm for an on-tractor laser range finder-based obstacle detector This algorithm consists of a template matching function and a Kalman filter for detecting the location of an obstacle, reconstructing the silhouette of the detected obstacle, and estimating its relative motions. Field validation test results verified that this obstacle detector was capable of detecting a moving object within a semicircle of 8 in radius and reconstructing a 2D silhouette of the obstacle progressively in real time. The errors of this obstacle detector in estimating the position, speed, and moving direction of the obstacle relative to the tractor were 0.052 in, 0.11 in s(-1), and 1.2 degrees, respectively. Such accuracies are sufficient for providing safety warning and collision avoidance for autonomous tractors infield operation.
  • R Sugiura, N Noguchi, K Ishii
    BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING 90 (4) 369 - 379 1537-5110 2005/04 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this study is to develop a system that can generate a map regarding crop status obtained by mounting an imaging sensor on an unmanned helicopter. The flight characteristic of an unmanned helicopter is effective for remote sensing. A real-time kinematic global positioning system (RTK-GPS) was adopted, and an inertial sensor (INS) that provides posture (roll and pitch angles) was installed in the helicopter. In addition, a geomagnetic direction sensor (GDS) that outputs an absolute direction was also attached to the helicopter. While obtaining pictures using the imaging sensor on the unmanned helicopter, image distortions arose due to changes in helicopter posture. Converting from image coordinates to global coordinates removes this distortion. However, a geomagnetic warp surrounding the helicopter created errors in the posture data, particularly a large GDS error. By correcting GDS errors, it was possible to generate a field map from helicopter-captured image data with a spatial error of 38 cm. (c) 2005 Silsoe Research Institute. All rights reserved.
  • ABE Gou, MIZUSHIMA Akira, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 67 (3) 65 - 71 0285-2543 2005 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The appropriate period of time for the harvesting in Japanese fields is shortly limited according to weather conditions. In this research, the robot tractor system which can automatically follow up to another tractor was developed for increasing work efficiency of the harvesting work. In order to find the preceding vehicle and to sense a relative position and posture under the 2-dimensional coordinate system obtained by a laser scanner, a "Template Matching" was applied. A field test using the developed automatic following control system was conducted to evaluate the performance. As the result, the robot tractor ran with the lateral error of 0.11m and the longitudinal error of less than 0.15m.
  • Yokobori Jun, Niwa Katsuhisa, Seino Nobutaka, Noguchi Noboru
    Agricultural Information Research Japanese Society of Agricultural Informatics 14 (1) 1 - 10 0916-9482 2005 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Precision agriculture is a management strategy that can be brought to bear on decisions associated with crop production, drawing data from multiple sources using information technologies. It can also help in grasping within-field variability and achieving uniform crop growth. In recent years, the use of satellite images has been researched in attempts to achieve uniform crop growth. However, it is difficult to use real-time satellite images of crop growth for decision making regarding crop growth uniformity because the satellite images are heavily dependent on weather conditions.
    This research was carried out in a potato field where the fertilizer system was difference by preceding crops using a real-time information from an unmanned helicopter. Potato growth, soil information and management information were unified by a GIS, clarifying which factors drove potato growth.
    Potato growth non-uniformity was found to be influenced by differences in the organic matter content remaining from preceding crops, and it was clarified that excessive nitrogenous fertilizer application in an area with a high organic matter content was the cause of a quality decrease. Therefore, the decision making in this field was clarified using variable-rate applications based on organic matter content. By incorporating elevation data from the unmanned helicopter into the GIS it was revealed that the area with a high organic matter content was in a concave portion of the field. Therefore, it was determined that appropriate nitrogen cultivation management of potato in the area with a high organic matter content required not only variable management but also drainage improvement.
  • SUGIURA Ryo, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 67 (2) 86 - 92 0285-2543 2005 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    When an unmanned helicopter flies far from an operator, it is very difficult for the operator to recognize the position, posture and working progress of the helicopter. One of the solutions is to develop a monitoring system enables the operator to grasp the state of flying helicopter. The objective of this study is to develop the monitoring system to support the remote sensing using an unmanned helicopter. The radio transmitter was adopted to transmit the position and posture data from the helicopter to the base station on the ground. The base station was composed of the radio receiver and a note type PC. The received helicopter information was visually displayed on the developed software. In addition to the position and posture's display, the software also offers the working progress because the sensed field area can be calculated by the position and posture of the helicopter. Furthermore, it is possible to view the helicopter's condition from the various view points by applying 3-dimensional graphics.
  • N Noguchi, J Will, J Reid, Q Zhang
    COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS IN AGRICULTURE 44 (1) 1 - 19 0168-1699 2004/07 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The primary objective of this study was to develop a control system for autonomous mobile robots used in farm operations. To accomplish this objective, it was necessary to develop mobile robots having minimal centralized control. This paper focuses on the development of two basic motion control algorithms, namely a GOTO algorithm and a FOLLOW algorithm, for use in a master-slave multi-robot system. These two robot motion control algorithms would have wide applicability in farm operations. The GOTO algorithm can be applied when the master wants the slave to go to a specific place, a certain distance from the current operational position. Safety is one important issue in controlling the master-slave system because the master and the slave move independently. In this GOTO algorithm, the slave was set to slow-down to allow the master pass the slave safely in case there was a potential collision due to path overlap in the field. The slave was also able to change its path to avoid a crash based on the collaborative GOTO algorithm. The FOLLOW algorithm allows for a more cooperative way to guide the slave to follow the master at a predetermined relative distance and angle, regardless of the traveling speed and direction. This FOLLOW algorithm incorporated a nonlinear sliding mode controller to provide a robust control for the slave. The validation tests indicated that the sliding mode controller could provide a better performance in terms of both lateral offset and spacing controls compared than using a conventional PD controller. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
  • KISE Michio, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 66 (2) 97 - 104 0285-2543 2004/03/01 
    Detecting obstacles invading the region in front of a tractor, and creating an obstacle avoidance behavior are needed as a safety device for an autonomous tractor. This paper presents an obstacle detection system based on a laser scanner. The algorithm utilized a template matching for reconstructing a shape of a target obstacle and for detecting its movement. An extended Kalman filter worked for enhancing an obstacle detection accuracy. Field tests were conducted to evaluate the developed system. The results indicated that the system was capable of estimate a position, a speed, and a heading angle of an obstacle with 2.7cm, 0.13m/s, 1.4° error, respectively.
  • Mizushima Akira, Noguchi Noboru, Ishii Kazunobu
    The Reference Collection of Annual Meeting 一般社団法人日本機械学会 2004 446 - 447 2004
  • Tsubota Ryo, Noguchi Noboru, Mizushima Akira
    The Reference Collection of Annual Meeting 一般社団法人日本機械学会 2004 448 - 449 2004
  • 岩堀 隆志, 杉浦 綾, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 66 305 - 306 0285-2543 2004
  • 水島 晃, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 66 77 - 78 0285-2543 2004
  • 杉浦 綾, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 66 303 - 304 0285-2543 2004
  • 関 正裕, 福嶌 陽, 田坂 幸平, 佐々木 豊, 野口 伸, 杉浦 綾, 松尾 陽介, 西村 洋, 堀尾 光広, 濱田 安之, 林 和信, 高橋 仁康, 帖佐 直
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 66 237 - 238 0285-2543 2004
  • SUGIURA Ryo, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 66 (6) 67 - 74 0285-2543 2004 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this study is to develop a remote sensing system that can generate a map regarding crop status and field information using an unmanned helicopter. The obtained image can be transformed to the global coordinate using the helicopter's position and posture if a sensed field has flat terrain. However, if the field has some inclinations, it is necessary to consider field terrain characteristic to maintain an accuracy of image mapping. In this research, a single axis laser range finder was adopted to obtain a field terrain information and the 3-demonsional image mapping algorism was developed. As a result of the field experiment, this system could generate a topographic map with 9cm error, and 3-dimensional image map with spatial error of 41cm.
  • MIZUSHIMA Akira, NOGUCHI Noboru, MATSUO Yousuke
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 66 (6) 136 - 144 0285-2543 2004 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Recently, there are many researches about GPS application for agriculture in the world. In this paper, the heading estimation method, using GPS alone, was proposed. In the developed algorithm, the system doesn't use the steering angle information. First, to evaluate the accuracy of direct heading measurement by GPS, straight and curve traveling test was conducted. As a result, the direct measurement included noise and time delay. Therefore, the heading estimation method by auto regression model was developed to overcome these problems. Consequently, 30% of accuracy in the straight travel test and 50% of accuracy in the curve travel test were improved.
  • Mizushima Akira, Tsubota Ryo, Noguchi Noboru
    Agricultural Information Research Japanese Society of Agricultural Informatics 13 (3) 227 - 235 0916-9482 2004 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The peat areas have a lot of patterned indented surface because of the varied forms caused by the fluvial trace and so on. Occasionally, an agricultural vehicle can not enter the farm field after the rain, because the soil of peat areas is soft ground and water table levels gain altitude. To discuss the countermeasure work about the patterned indented surface and the bearing capacity of the land, the precise geographical information of the whole farm field is required. But, the new effective investigation method is required, because the peat areas are extensive fields. In this study, the monitoring system of peat areas using the agricultural robot was developed to obtain precise field information effectively and accurately. As farm field information, the digital elevation model (DEM) is obtained by a GPS and one axis laser range finder. And the roll, pitch angle, slip ratio and subsidence of the vehicle were measured as vehicle information. The field test by an agricultural robot was conducted. Navigation sensors of the robot were an RTK-GPS and an IMU which is composed of fiber optical gyroscope. In addition, the test farm field was evaluated by generating the GIS map using the measured field and vehicle information.
  • Sugiura Ryo, Noguchi Noboru, Ishii Kazunobu
    Agricultural Information Research Japanese Society of Agricultural Informatics 13 (4) 291 - 300 0916-9482 2004 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Topographic data obtained by airplane-based surveys is spatially disordered. There are both high and low density portions in the topographic data, and some data are redundant. A graphical terrain model or a digital elevation model (DEM) is generally generated from raster data, and the decimation (reducing the level of redundancy in data) is based on that data structure. However, this approach is not useful when rasterizing topographic data derived from laser range finders because imposing a raster data structure introduces visual and numerical errors. In this research, topographic data was obtained using a one-axis laser range finder mounted on an unmanned helicopter. The collected data were not evenly spaced over a regular grid as rasterized data are. This paper describes methods that can automatically generate triangular mesh from a topographic data set, and simplify the data while maintaining accuracy. These methods were evaluated by examining the topographical feature error resulting from simplifying the 507 raw data points obtained by the helicopter-based survey. When a data set of 107 points were generated (79% size of the original raw data), topographical error was less than 0.12 m. By way of comparison, when 400 data points were eliminated at random, the corresponding error was 1.35 m. Furthermore, when 110 points data were generated by rasterizing, the error was 0.88 m. Consequently, it was concluded that the developed method was very effective.
  • NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 65 (4) 13 - 17 0285-2543 2003/07/01
  • 阿部 剛, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 65 159 - 160 0285-2543 2003
  • 深川 知久, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 65 317 - 318 0285-2543 2003
  • 松尾 陽介, 濱田 安之, 津賀 幸之介, 山本 聡史, 行本 修, 野口 伸, 山形県立農業試験場, 北海道立中央農業試験場, 井関農機 (株), (株) ソキア, DXアンテナ (株), 日本航空電子工業 (株), 日本電計 (株), 日本無線 (株), ヤンマー農機 (株)
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 65 473 - 474 0285-2543 2003
  • 杉浦 綾, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 65 449 - 450 0285-2543 2003
  • 水島 晃, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男, 松尾 陽介, 浜田 安之
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 65 35 - 36 0285-2543 2003
  • 濱田 安之, 松尾 陽介, 津賀 幸之介, 山本 聡史, 行本 修, 野口 伸, 山形県立農業試験場, 北海道立中央農業試験場, 井関農機 (株), (株) ソキア, DXアンテナ (株), 日本航空電子工業 (株), 日本電計 (株), 日本無線 (株), ヤンマー農機 (株)
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 65 475 - 476 0285-2543 2003
  • A Mizushima, N Noguchi, K Ishii, H Terao
    PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2003 IEEE/ASME INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ADVANCED INTELLIGENT MECHATRONICS (AIM 2003), VOLS 1 AND 2 1067 - 1072 2159-6255 2003 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    In this paper, low cost navigation sensor unit composed of three vibratory gyroscopes and two inclinometers and the DGPS was developed The sensor can provide the position corrected by inclination, heading angle and roll/pitch inclinations. And the measured position was interpolated by the dead reckoning, because the sampling rate of the DGPS was 1Hz. The accuracy of developed sensor unit was evaluated by field test on the flat field, gentle slope and bumpy road.
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, O'BRIEN John G.
    Environmental Control in Biology Japanese Society of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Engineers and Scientists 41 (2) 107 - 120 0582-4087 2003 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Agriculture methods in developed countries since the Industrial Revolution have tended to favor greater energy inputs using large tractors and increased applications of synthetic chemicals and fertilizer. While these methods of agricultural production have some negative societal and environmental implications, they have generally supported the food needs of the rapidly growing human population. However, a new mode of thought, with new technology is needed for the future. An agricultural production system that utilizes recent advances in sensor technology can fill this role, becoming an essential component of an intelligent agricultural production system. Specifically, remote sensing technology can supply information about current crop status, including maturity and weed infestations. Information gathered through vision sensors and GPS can be integrated to create field management schedules for chemical application, cultivation, and harvest. Satellites, as well as ground-based technologies have been studied in Japan for sensing the condition of field crops. While both methods have some drawbacks to utilization for crop status sensing in precision agriculture, a helicopter-base sensing system offers several solutions to common obstacles. These benefits include timeliness, spatial resolution as well as efficiency. This paper introduces current technologies, describes timely methods for remote sensing in precision agriculture using an unmanned helicopter, and discusses their impact on agricultural production systems.
  • MIZUSHIMA Akira, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo, MATSUO Yousuke, YAMAMOTO Satoshi
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 65 (1) 106 - 114 0285-2543 2003 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research is to develop an automatic guidance system composed of relatively low cost sensors. As a navigation sensor, we used a geomagnetic direction sensor (GDS) and a gyroscope. In this paper, the precise estimation method of the vehicle orientation was proposed. First, the noise of inclinometer were eliminated by an adaptive line enhancer (ALE). Second, the drift error of the gyroscope was estimated by a least square method (LSM). Third, these sensors output were integrated to obtain the accurate vehicle orientation. Finally, to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed estimation method of orientation, the automatic navigation test was carried out in the actually used field. As a result of the automatic navigation test, it was confirmed that the proposed estimation method had the ability to navigate the mobile vehicle with high accuracy.
  • SUGIURA Ryo, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 65 (1) 53 - 61 0285-2543 2003 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this study is to develop a system that can generate a map regarding crop status obtained by an imaging sensor mounted on an unmanned helicopter. As for the unmanned helicopter used in this research, an RTK-GPS was adopted as a positioning sensor, and an inertial sensor that provides posture (roll and pitch angles) was installed in the helicopter. Moreover, a geomagnetic direction sensor (GDS) that outputs an absolute direction is also equipped with the helicopter. When obtaining the image by the imaging sensor on the helicopter, some distortions caused by change of helicopter's posture arise in the image. In order to remove this distortion, geometric correction by converting from image coordinate to global coordinate is badly needed. But there are errors in posture data. Particularly, large GDS error was caused by warp of geomagnetism surrounding the helicopter. Therefore the method of correction of GDS errors was developed in the study. As the result, it was possible to generate a map including maximum error of 41cm using the image taken from the helicopter.
  • 杉浦 綾, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 64 333 - 334 0285-2543 2002
  • 深川 知久, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 64 341 - 342 0285-2543 2002
  • 堀岡 裕二, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 64 295 - 296 0285-2543 2002
  • 水島 晃, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男, 松尾 陽介, 山本 聡史
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 64 297 - 298 0285-2543 2002
  • 木瀬 道夫, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 64 307 - 308 0285-2543 2002
  • N Noguchi, K Ishii, H Terao
    INTELLIGENT AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES 2001 191 - 195 2002 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The dynamic path creation method was developed using a third-order spline function. It took into account both the non-holonomic constraints that specify the tangent direction along any feasible path for the robot and a bound on the curvature of the path. By introducing the developed path creation method, the robot can automatically create a feasible turning path on a headland. In the study, both a computer simulation and a field test using a mobile robot based on a medium-size tractor were carried out. The robot used an RTK-GPS and a fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) as navigation sensors. Through the field experiments, it was concluded that the developed path creation method of the robot had satisfied performance. Copyright (C) 2001 IFAC.
  • JD Will, JF Reid, N Noguchi
    INTELLIGENT AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES 2001 351 - 356 2002 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This paper presents a model for compensating for side-slip error in off-road vehicles. This model is based on a single-factor correction to the classical single-track model. This factor is calculated as a function of the steering angle of the vehicle, vehicle speed, and the surface over which the vehicle is traveling. The new method does not require additional estimation states nor does it require additional sensors or measurements, as many present techniques require. The performance of this model is evaluated experimentally with a agricultural vehicle, and results from field data are presented for several cases. Surface conditions of dry soil, wet soil, gravel and pavement are investigated and reported on. Copyright (C) 2001 IFAC.
  • M Kise, N Noguchi, K Ishii, H Terao
    INTELLIGENT AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES 2001 99 - 104 2002 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The autonomous tractor system engaged in all type of operations at fields was developed in the paper. The developed system adopted an RTK-GPS and a Fiber Optical Gyroscope (FOG) as navigation sensors. The sensor-fusion algorithm based on Least Squares Method for estimating FOG bias in each step for detecting an absolute vehicle heading was developed. An Autonomous tractor has to have a mission planner including a path planner, because the tractor uses some types of implement under various settings of PTO, transmission, and engine speed. The navigation maps consisted of a desired path and commands including PTO status, transmission, and other functions were generated by a GIS software for each farm operation. The developed system could autonomously perform a rotary tillage with 6 cm error from the scheduled path at 1.5 m/s by applying the navigation map.
  • N Noguchi, Q Zhang, SF Han, JF Reid
    INTELLIGENT AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES 2001 197 - 202 2002 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This paper reports the development of an autonomous agricultural tractor with an intelligent navigation system. The intelligent navigation system consisted of a set of redundant guidance sensors, a sensor fusion algorithm, and an intelligent navigation algorithm. This autonomous tractor was built on a Case-IH Magnum(1)* MX-240 2-wheel drive agricultural tractor platform. Evaluation tests on autonomous planting and row crop cultivating verified that this autonomous tractor could autonomously perform planting and cultivating functions on typical Midwest farming land. It could achieve an operating speed of 8 m/s ith a small trajectory tracking error of less than 0.05m. Copyright (C) 2001 IFAC.
  • N Noguchi, M Kise, JF Reid, Q Zhang
    INTELLIGENT CONTROL FOR AGRICULTURAL APPLICATIONS 2001 155 - 160 2002 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This study developed a field robot for an agricultural operating environment. The navigation sensor consisted of an RTK-GPS, a fiber optic gyroscope (FOG), and an inertial measurement unit (IMU). A sensor fusion algorithm was used to identify FOG bias and compensate for location error in real-time, thus providing sufficient navigation information to support accurate robot guidance in the field. The guidance system could guide the agricultural robot automatically to follow either straight or curve paths including crop rows at a speed of 2.5 m/s. This RMS position error of the desired pathway in the field was less than 3 cm The results indicated that the navigation system was capable of guiding an agricultural robot accurately and robustly under normal agricultural operations. Copyright (C) 2001 IFAC.
  • N Noguchi, JF Reid, K Ishii, H Terao
    INTELLIGENT AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES 2001 111 - 115 2002 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Sensors are an essential part of intelligent agricultural machinery. Machine vision, in particular, can supply information about current crop status, including maturity and weed infestations. The information gathered through machine vision and other sensors such as GPS can be used to create field management schedules for chemical application, cultivation and harvest. The purpose of the study is to develop an intelligent machine vision system for an agricultural mobile robot A multi-spectral imaging system was developed to remotely obtain crop status on a field. Copyright (C) 2001 IFAC.
  • N Noguchi, JF Reid, K Ishii, H Terao
    INTELLIGENT CONTROL FOR AGRICULTURAL APPLICATIONS 2001 33 - 38 2002 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Sensors are an essential part of intelligent agricultural machinery. Machine vision, in particular, can supply information about current crop status, including maturity and weed infestations. The information gathered through machine vision and other sensors such as GPS can be used to create field management schedules for chemical application, cultivation and harvest. The purpose of the study is to develop an intelligent machine vision system for an agricultural mobile robot A multi-spectral imaging system was developed to remotely obtain crop status on a field. The developed multi-spectral imaging system (MSIS) consists of an imaging sensor, an illumination sensor, a differential GPS, and a portable computer. The imaging sensor was a custom-developed 3-CCD camera, which contains three separate optical paths and CCD image plane. Special optical filters were installed over the sensors providing three video channels of Green (G), Red (R), and near infrared (NIR). The field experiment of MSIS was conducted using cornfield. The r(2) for estimation of the crop height showed 0.73. And, the r2 for estimation of the SPAD value showed 0.92 by using both reflectance and leaf area information. As a result, the developed vision system enables a robot to recognize the crop status and efficiently conduct field operation through the timely information. The outputs include crop stress maps with nitrogen deficiency indexes on the field which is available on building a database for precise field management. Copyright (C) 2001 IFAC.
  • MIZUSHIMA Akira, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo, YUKUMOTO Osamu, YAMAMOTO Satoshi
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 64 (2) 62 - 70 0285-2543 2002 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research is to develop an automatic guidance system based on sensor fusion of a geomagnetic direction sensor (GDS) and a gyroscope. From the first report, it was confirmed that an accurate automatic navigation by a fixed desired heading direction was very difficult because of a temporal and spatial geomagnetic variation and a drift error of a gyroscope. In this study, we proposed the dynamic compensation method against both a geomagnetic warp and a gyro drift by constructing the adaptive guidance system. From the computer simulation, the accuracy of sensor fusion guidance system improved about 70% compared with the GDS alone. To evaluate robustness of the developed system, a field test using the developed guidance system was carried out. From the test, the accuracy and robustness of the guidance system improved by utilizing the proposed sensor fusion method using the GDS and the gyroscope.
  • KISE Michio, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 64 (2) 102 - 110 0285-2543 2002 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Turning algorithm for a robot tractor was developed in this paper. Two types of turning paths were created by applying third-order Spline function; forward turning, and switch-back turning. The constraints relating to the tractor characteristics, minimum turning radius and maximum steering speeds, were introduced for creating a feasible turning path. The turning path was recalculated while created path wasn't fulfilled these constraints.
    Validity of the constraints was confirmed by a computer simulation. The developed algorithm was tested in the field with the robot tractor developed in a previous paper, and it showed higher following accuracy in comparison to conventional method.
  • KISE Michio, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 64 (4) 76 - 84 0285-2543 2002 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This paper reported about new steering control algorithm. The steering controller developed in previous paper was designed to guide along with a straight path, and it didn't confirm the accuracy of following a curved path. But the robot tractor has to have a function to travel along any curved path precisely to achieve farm management by the robot. The steering control algorithm applied a linear optimal regulator was developed and tested at a field with some curved paths. The developed system showed the outstanding guidance performance comparing to a conventional method which uses a PI controller on all types of the paths including a 90 degree turn, a sinusoidal, and a forward turning paths. In addition, the developed controller could perform high-speed guidance at 3.0m/s more precisely than the conventional PI controller.
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu
    JES Ergonomics Japan Ergonomics Society 37 74 - 75 0549-4974 2001/09/04
  • KAIZU Yutaka, IIO Munetaka, YAMADA Hiroyuki, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Biosystems Engineering 109 (4) 338 - 347 1537-5110 2001 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • KISE Michio, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 63 (5) 80 - 85 0285-2543 2001 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    An Autonomous tractor that is able to utilize for all type of operations on fields requires travel in a relatively wide speed range, and has to have a mission planner that controls PTO, transmission, and engine speed as well as path planner. In this paper, the Navigation map, which has not only desired path but also settings of PTO, transmission, engine speed, and other functions as commands to the tractor was invented in order to work out both problems of operation planning and path control.
    The developed system adopted an RTK-GPS and a FOG as navigation sensors. It could autonomously perform rotary tillage with 6cm error from scheduled path at 1.5m/s by applying the navigation map.
  • KISE Michio, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 63 (5) 74 - 79 0285-2543 2001 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    A sensor fusion algorithm for an autonomous vehicle utilizing an RTK-GPS and a FOG as navigation sensors was proposed in this paper. The goal of this paper is to develop the method that estimates a heading angle corresponding with GPS coordinate system. The developed algorithm based on Least Squares Method, could estimate FOG bias in each step for detecting a heading angle. The developed method was examined by simulating with actual data by manual operation, and it could estimate the bias angle with satisfying accuracy on all types of paths, straight, curve, and turns. In addition, the guidance system with this method performed automatic planting at the field with 4.5cm r. m. s. error from the desired path.
  • MATSUO Yosuke, YUKUMOTO Osamu, IRIE Yasuo, ICHISUGI Noriaki, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 63 (3) 114 - 121 0285-2543 2001 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    A tilling robots, which had almost the same performance with human operation, have been developed in the study. Three types of automated navigation systems; (1) an off-the-wire type, in which electric cables are installed around a field area, (2) a GPS type, in which an inertial measuring unit is combined with, and (3) an optical type, in which an auto-tracking type surveying system is applied, were employed for the robot accomplishing the mission in various field conditions and environments. The developed robot could obtain the accurate position and the heading angle in real time using above navigation systems. In addition, the software, which could autonomously achieve tilling on the rectangular-shape field according to the detected posture information, was also developed.
  • MIZUSHIMA Akira, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo, YUKUMOTO Osamu, YAMAMOTO Satoshi
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 63 (4) 96 - 102 0285-2543 2001 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research is to develop an automatic guidance system composed of relatively low cost sensors. As a navigation sensor, we used a geomagnetic direction sensor (GDS) and a gyroscope. To increase the accuracy of these sensors outputs and guidance performance, these sensor output were integrated by sensor fusion technique. In the paper, a fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) was applied as a gyroscope. To evaluate the performance of these sensors for utilizing on an automatic guidance, and to confirm the effect of sensor fusion technique, the automatic guidance test was conducted on a paddy field. A kalman filter was employed as sensor fusion method. The kinematics of a vehicle was modeled and a heading error and a lateral offset were estimated by the kalman filter. The developed fusion technique was able to control the vehicle automatically with higher accuracy compared to that using single navigation sensor.
  • YUKUMOTO O., MATSUO Y., NOGUCHI N.
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 62 (3) 2 - 2 0285-2543 2000/05/01
  • O Yukumoto, Y Matsuo, N Noguchi
    JARQ-JAPAN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY 34 (2) 99 - 105 0021-3551 2000/04 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Studies on the robotization of agricultural vehicles have been conducted to perform labor-saving, high-precision operations, etc. Component technologies for the robotization were described in general, along with navigation systems. As an example of robotized vehicles, we planned to develop a tilling robot. To recognize the position with an error less than 5 cm and at intervals less than 1 s, we developed 3 types of navigation systems; an off-the-wire type, a kinematic global positioning system (GPS) with inertial navigation system (INS) type and an optical type.
  • O Yukumoto, Y Matsuo, N Noguchi
    JARQ-JAPAN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY 34 (2) 107 - 114 0021-3551 2000/04 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    We have developed a tilling robot that can recognize its own position and heading, while performing unmanned tilling at almost the same work rate as manual work. The tilling robot is composed of navigation systems for positioning and heading, a robotized vehicle, a controller, and an operation software. A geomagnetic sensor (TMS) is utilized for the navigation system for heading. The operation software consists of teaching, path planning, vehicle controlling, self-diagnosis, and abnormality alarming sections. We found that the tilling robot can perform unmanned tilling operations over a whole field area of 50 a with almost the same efficiency and accuracy as manual work.
  • FAC Pinto, JF Reid, Q Zhang, N Noguchi
    JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING RESEARCH 75 (3) 257 - 264 0021-8634 2000/03 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    An image recognition algorithm has been developed as part of a vision-based guidance system for row crops. Each combination of the vehicle guidance parameters, offset and heading angle, was treated as a 'pose' of the interested object, the crop rows. Whilst several pose recognition algorithms have previously been developed, the proposed algorithm is capable of determining the heading angle and the offset of a vehicle relative to the crop rows. A set of poses was collected and used as a training set. The training stage of the algorithm used the principal component analysis (Hotelling transform) to produce a low-dimensional eigenspace on which each pose was represented by its projections. Given a new image, the pose (heading angle and offset) recognition was done by projecting the image onto the eigenspace and determining the closest training image projection. Another set of poses was used to test the performance of the algorithm. Using different region of interest to train and test the algorithm, it presented the least average absolute error of 4.47 cm and 1.26 degrees for offset and heading angle, respectively, when using the central part of images for pose determination. (C) 2000 Silsoe Research Institute
  • 水島 晃, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男, 行本 修, 山本 聡史
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 62 347 - 348 0285-2543 2000
  • 木瀬 道夫, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 62 355 - 356 0285-2543 2000
  • 飯塚 学, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 62 359 - 360 0285-2543 2000
  • 石井 一暢, 飯田 岳, 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 62 363 - 364 0285-2543 2000
  • 水島 晃, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 62 357 - 358 0285-2543 2000
  • 山下 修作, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 桃野 寛, 鈴木 剛
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 62 365 - 366 0285-2543 2000
  • JF Reid, Q Zhang, N Noguchi, M Dickson
    COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS IN AGRICULTURE 25 (1-2) 155 - 167 0168-1699 2000/01 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    A review of the recent research in agricultural vehicle guidance automation in North America is presented. A conceptual framework of an agricultural vehicle guidance automation system includes navigation sensors, navigation planner, vehicle motion models, and steering controllers. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
  • IIDA Takashi, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 62 (2) 87 - 93 0285-2543 2000 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Precision farming technology with controlling nitrogen treatment is available for management and environmental considerations. The objective of this study is to develop a method for obtaining nitrogen stress using machine vision. Digital green meter and leaf color scale have been already commercialized as measurement devices for nitrogen stress of crops. In this paper, measurement principle of nitrogen stress is proposed based on leaf reflectance. It was concluded that the wavelength of 550, 650nm is proper for detecting nitrogen stress.
  • KISE Michio, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 62 (6) 145 - 153 0285-2543 2000 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    A positioning system is an essential part for an autonomous vehicle. Recent researches have shown that positioning based on a GPS offers high possibility for fulfilling the vehicle guidance. When enough number of satellites and high GDOP are assured, a current RTK-GPS can achieve accuracy of 1-2cm error. However, the RTK-GPS is still costly for farm use. Therefore, the paper dealt with utilization of the low cost Differential-GPS (DGPS) for the vehicle guidance system. In the paper, two guidance systems (NAV-1 and NAV-2) with a DGPS and a Geomagnetic Direction Sensor (GDS) have been developed. The NAV-1 could navigate the vehicle to the desired position with the heading angle sensed by the GDS and desired heading angle cyclically updated by the DGPS with 0.5m error. An another system, the NAV-2 could make the vehicle travel along a straight path using a lateral error from a desired path using both the DGPS and the GDS. Noise of lateral error caused by DGPS measurement error was filtered out by combining a moving-average with an AR model.
  • MIZUSHIMA Akira, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 62 (4) 146 - 153 0285-2543 2000 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    A GPS is widely used as a positioning system for an automatic vehicle guidance. But, generally a GPS antenna is installed at the top of a vehicle whose height is 2 to 3 meters from the ground, a position error raised from vehicle inclinations (roll and pitch) is included. In this research, to increase travel accuracy of vehicle guidance, we propose the correction method of the position error caused by vehicle inclinations. To evaluate a performance of the developed correction method, the travel test by giving roll and pitch was conducted. The average of lateral error indicated about 17.1cm, when the vehicle traveled without inclination correction, while the average error was reduced up to about 2.1cm by introducing the inclination correction. In addition, to investigate the performance under higher velocity, the traveling test in which running speed exceeding 4.0m/s was also carried out. Without the inclination correction, the R. M. S. error in the lateral direction of the vehicle reached 10.4cm. On the other hand, when the developed correction method was utilized, the R. M. S. error decreased to about 3.8cm. It was concluded that the performance of the developed guidance system on high speed travel was satisfied with actual field managements.
  • NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 61 (1) 12 - 16 0285-2543 1999/01/01
  • Mizushima Akira, Noguchi Noboru, Ishii Kazunobu, Terao Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 61 559 - 560 0285-2543 1999
  • Kise M., Noguchi N., Ishii K., Terao H.
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 61 561 - 562 0285-2543 1999
  • Iida Takashi, Noguchi Noboru, Ishii Kazunobu, Terao Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 61 513 - 514 0285-2543 1999
  • ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 61 535 - 536 0285-2543 1999
  • 松尾 陽介, 行本 修, 小林 達也, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 61 379 - 380 0285-2543 1999
  • K Ishii, H Terao, N Noguchi
    ADVANCED ROBOTICS 13 (3) 289 - 291 0169-1864 1999 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • NOGUCHI N.
    Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics 11 (3) 193 - 199 1999 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • 三谷 真二, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸, 石井 耕太
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 257 - 258 0285-2543 1998
  • 木瀬 道夫, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 371 - 372 0285-2543 1998
  • 松尾 陽介, 行本 修, 小林 達也, 野口 伸, 入江 康夫, 一杉 則昭, 鈴木 正肚
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 417 - 418 0285-2543 1998
  • 野口 伸, Reid John F.
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 329 - 330 0285-2543 1998
  • 野口 伸, Reid John F.
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 331 - 332 0285-2543 1998
  • MG Yisa, H Terao, N Noguchi, M Kubota
    JOURNAL OF TERRAMECHANICS 35 (1) 1 - 19 0022-4898 1998/01 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Mathematical models of tractor-implement combinations were developed to predict their stability on slopes. A procedure based on three criteria was then developed to assess the stability of both tractor-trailed implement combinations and tractor-mounted implement combinations. The three criteria were "sideslip criterion" which determines the slope angle-heading angle combination at which uncontrollable slip sets in; "overturning criterion" which determines the slope angle-heading angle combinations at which partial and total stability limits are reached, i.e. slope angle-heading angle combinations at which the vertical load on one or two tyres will be zero; and the "general criterion", which results directly from regulations in many countries that require tractor-implement combinations to have at least 20% of their total weight on the front axle at all times. This criterion extended this requirement to the effect that at least 20% of the total weight must be available on each side of the combination at all times. The application of these criteria gave stability regions for a given combination. Simultaneous application of the criteria gave optimum parameters which would maximize these stability regions. Simulation results showed that for better, stability of tractor-implement combinations, the implement centre of gravity should be behind its axle. Other results showed that tractors in combination with mounted implements like sprayers, spreaders etc., would be more stable if the implements were designed so that their centres of gravity move forward as emptying progresses. (C) 1998 ISTVS. All rights reserved.
  • ISHII Kohta, FUMOTO Takahiro, TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 (6) 3 - 9 0285-2543 1998 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    To increase the efficiency of the biogas-diesel dual fuel engine by heat recovery from an engine coolant and an exhaust gas, a co-generation system (CGS) was developed. An gas heat exchanger of a double-tube and parallel flow type are adopted considering the easiness of manufacturing and system modeling. As a result of the experiment, the heat exchanger could collect more quantity of heat than that raised from the simulation. As an additional merit of the heat exchanger, the heat efficiency of the engine also increases because the flow resistance of exhaust gas were decreased by contraction of gas volume. The total energy efficiency of the developed CGS is equal to 65%.
  • YUKUMOTO Osamu, MATSUO Yosuke, NOGUCHI Noboru, SUZUKI Masato
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 (5) 53 - 61 0285-2543 1998 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    In order to improve a performance of the tilling robot, control methods of a 90°turn and a sideways movement were developed. The controller of the 90°turn has an ability that is able to learn a turn radius during operation so as to compensate a fluctuation of a turn radius which is caused by changing the moisture content and the soil type of the field surface. On the other hand, in order to move the robot sideways effectively and to guide the robot to the target path precisely, the controller of the sideways movement was contrived to judge the necessity of the forward movement by evaluating difficulty of the robot control as a quantity.
  • YUKUMOTO Osamu, MATSUO Yosuke, NOGUCHI Noboru, SUZUKI Masato
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 (4) 29 - 36 0285-2543 1998 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This study aims to develop a steering control system for following a predetermined path which was obtained by the module of a task planning. The tilling robot system which had a position sensing system (OPTREC) and a geomagnetic direction sensor (TMS) was developed. The OPTREC which was remodeled from an opt-electric type surveying instrument is able to follow the movement of the robot and measure the position in the interval of 0.5s to 0.8s. The steering controller which considered nonlinearity of the vehicle dynamics, enabled the robot to follow the predetermined path under the average lateral error of about 5.2cm on a flat field.
  • YUKUMOTO Osamu, MATSUO Yosuke, NOGUCHI Noboru, SUZUKI Masato
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 (3) 37 - 44 0285-2543 1998 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The purpose of this study is to develop a robot system which satisfies the necessary requirements to till a field. After an operator teaches the robot the area to cultivate by operating around the inside of the field, the robot is able to till the overall region. This paper dealt with the control algorithm which had a series of functions from a task planning of the robot to a following control of the path which was determined by the task panning. The control algorithm of the robot was divided into five modules: "Teaching", "Task planning", "Switch-back operation", "Transference" and "Round-about operation". The effectiveness of the developed robot system was verified in field experiments.
  • ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 (1) 51 - 58 0285-2543 1998 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The environment in which an agricultural vehicle works is a time-variant and nonlinear system; therefore, an adaptive steering controller is required for navigating the vehicle precisely. In this paper, the positioning system which utilized a vision information was modified, so as to be applied for the neuro-controller which is one of nonlinear controllers. The classifier of the visual marker and the background which we developed, is based on the chromaticities subjected to a rotation and a translation of coordinates. The accuracy of the positioning system which was investigated by a field experiment, showed maximum error of 13cm on a flat meadow of 40m×60m. In addition, the recognition method of the visual marker, which applied a neural network, was also developed to improve the measurement accuracy. Finally, the vehicle automation experiment was conducted on a flat meadow hypothesized on a reciprocating work. As a result, the autonomous vehicle was able to travel in a desired work width using the positioning system, and indicated satisfied performance.
  • ISHII Kohta, TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 (5) 3 - 10 0285-2543 1998 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    In our research a dual-fuel diesel engine was operated with biogas and diesel fuel. The performance of the engine was able to be increased by optimized scheduling of Biogas supply to the engine by using a buffering tank. In this method, it is assumed that the profiles of biogas production and the engine load are fixed every day. But it is expected that these profiles are changing every day. Therefore, the declaration of the engine performance caused by such fluctuation was evaluated. The fluctuation of biogas production profile had almost no effect on the engine performance, but had more effects on engine load. But in many cases, the declaration of the performance were not so significant. Therefore the optimized schedule of Biogas supply has the robustness against the fluctuation of the operating situation.
  • ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru, KISE Michio
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 60 (2) 53 - 58 0285-2543 1998 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Agricultural vehicles operate in an offroad environment, and the attached implements are changed as occasion demands; thereby, the motion characteristics of the vehicle essentially change. The purpose of this study is to develop an adaptive steering controller using the measurement system of a position and a heading angle dealt in previous studies. To suit the environment change, an adaptable neuro-controller was developed, utilizing a self-organization function of a neural network. Computer simulations using a vehicle simulator were performed. As a result, the online neuro-controller could adapt to the change in the field surface condition, and make the vehicle travel precisely. Furthermore, in consideration of an actual vehicle system, position estimation using the vehicle simulator was developed for compensating a time delay of the positioning system. It was clear that the neuro-controller can appropriately adapt for the change in the field surface, and is also effective for a farm field by the experiment using the developed position estimation.
  • N Noguchi, H Terao
    COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS IN AGRICULTURE 18 (2-3) 187 - 204 0168-1699 1997/08 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    The purpose of this study is to develop a method that is able to create a suboptimal path of an agricultural mobile robot. This work is an attempt to apply a control technique combining a neural network (NN) and a genetic algorithm (GA). A NN is applied to describe the motion of the agricultural mobile robot as a nonlinear system because it is able to identify the dynamics of complex systems with its high learning ability. To create a path using a simulator described by the NN, a GA, which is inspired by biological evolution and uses a process of variation and selection to search a solution space, is utilized as an optimization method. Using this simulator and the GA, the time series of the steer angles, which were the control input, were optimized, and consequently an optimal work path of the mobile robot was created. The technique explored here should be applicable to a wide variety of nonlinear control problems in agriculture. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.
  • N Noguchi, K Ishii, H Terao
    JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING RESEARCH 67 (1) 1 - 15 0021-8634 1997/05 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    To solve the problem of labour shortage and the decrease in skilled agricultural workers, it is thought that mobile robots, which substitute for conventional tractors, will play an important role in the next century. This paper describes a mobile robot system, including a positioning system, using image sensors. A mobile robot which can be controlled by positions obtained from the image sensors and the heading angles from a geomagnetic direction sensor (GDS) has been developed. Because of its low cost, the GDS has recently been used in much research related to mobile robots. However, there are two major problems in using the GDS as a sensor: the error from magnetism which exists around the robot and the error from the robot inclinations. Owing to these error factors of the GDS and in order to utilize it effectively, a method is developed in this paper to refine the GDS output using neural networks (NN). The positioning system for the mobile robot is based on the principle of triangulation; it is composed of a main system and two subsystems both having a static image sensor. Each subsystem is able to follow the movement of the robot and to measure the angle to the robot using image analysis. The main system calculates the robot position using two angles from the subsystems and sends it to the robot using a telecommunication system. Finally, assuming that the robot will transport hay on a meadow, a control algorithm for the mobile robot system is developed, and a field test is conducted on grassland to evaluate the developed robot system. The average error of the final position for each target position was found to be about 0.4 m. The absolute maximum error and the r.m.s. error of the position for the predetermined path were about 0.51 m and 0.23 m, respectively, over all travels. (C) 1997 Silsoe Research Institute.
  • 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 59 115 - 116 0285-2543 1997
  • 行本 修, 松尾 陽介, 油田 克也, 野口 伸, 伊藤 勝美, 一杉 則昭
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 59 55 - 56 0285-2543 1997
  • 松尾 陽介, 行本 修, 油田 克也, 野口 伸, 伊藤 勝美, 一杉 則昭
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 59 57 - 58 0285-2543 1997
  • 建石 邦夫, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 59 3 - 4 0285-2543 1997
  • 石井 耕太, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 59 221 - 222 0285-2543 1997
  • 麓 貴弘, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 59 219 - 220 0285-2543 1997
  • 石井 耕太, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 59 (1) 3 - 10 1997 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • 水島晃, 野口伸
    農業機械学会誌 59 (1) 49 - 58 1997 [Refereed][Not invited]
  • D Wierzbicki, H Terao, N Noguchi, C Waszkiewicz
    MATHEMATICAL AND CONTROL APPLICATIONS IN AGRICULTURE AND HORTICULTURE 193 - 198 1997 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This paper describes the development of a fuzzy logic control system to control the speed of a diesel engine by adjusting the rack of the injection pump. A genetic algorithm technique was used to simultaneously design the fuzzy logic membership functions and rules. The engine tests were conducted; the results indicate that the response of the fuzzy control system design by a genetic algorithm had a faster response than the other controllers tested. The fuzzy control system also had a higher engine speed stability along with reduced fuel consumption.
  • NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 58 (4) 130 - 134 0285-2543 1996/07/01
  • N Noguchi, H Terao, C Sakata
    BIORESOURCE TECHNOLOGY 56 (1) 35 - 39 0960-8524 1996/04 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    To utilize ethanol from agricultural residue as a fuel in diesel engines, a dual-fuel engine was developed. The engine, which was equipped with a system to electrically control diesel and alcohol flow rates, met basic requirements of a tractor engine, including engine speed control and setting of the torque curve. However, engine knock due to alcohol was a significant drawback. A diesel injection pump with a timing and flow rate control system was adapted and the effect of injection timing on combustion and performance was investigated. It was observed that the timing control was effective in reducing Engine knock caused by rapid alcohol combustion. (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.
  • SAKATA Chikanori, TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 58 (2) 3 - 10 0285-2543 1996/03/01 
    To save fossil energy and reduce exhaust gas emission, a dual-fuel tractor engine with alcohol fumigation was developed. This engine has two control modes, that is "diesel fuel mode" and "dual-fuel mode". With this system, it is able to choose a control mode in various operating conditions at will. Power, heat consumption, NOx concentration and smoke density of the tested engine were examined through a PTO performance test for the two control modes. The performance of each mode indicated as good as a normal aspiration diesel engine of a tractor. In addition to this, on the dual-fuel mode NOx concentration was 40% less than on the diesel mode. Finally, plowing was carried out as feasible test using the dual-fuel tractor. The satisfactory performance of the dual-fuel control system and durability for over-loads of the engine were confirmed.
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kohta, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 58 (2) 113 - 122 0285-2543 1996 [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    A small diesel engine was modified to operate in a dual-fuel mode with methane that was one of the alternate fuels. A microprocessor system for controlling the diesel fuel flow rate and methane flow rate was designed. The system was able to measure the flow rate of methane, the engine torque and the engine speed electrically in addition to the control. The technology for supplying diesel fuel and methane was developed using this control system, in order to control the dual-fuel engine optimaly in terms of its performance characteristics, such as the efficiency, the smoke and the replacement of methane. The advantages of this technology using the weighting method were (1) to be able to control optimally the dual-fuel engine under the general performance derived from all parameters, and (2) to determine the weight of each parameter at will as occasion demands in designing a dual-fuel diesel engine.
  • ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 57 (6) 61 - 67 0285-2543 1995/11/01 
    This study intends to make an appropriate control system for a nonlinear vehicle kinematics in view of developing autonomous agricultural vehicles. In order to evaluate the results of computer simulation reported in Part 1 and to develop an autonomous vehicle, a model vehicle was designed and fabricated. To make neuro-controller effective, a learning procedure by using vehicle simulator was contrived. As the vehicle velocity was necessary for following control using the neuro-controller, the velocity was estimated using data from a geomagnetic sensor and rotary encoders. Finally, following control examinations were carried out, and it was clarified that neuro-controller was effective for vehicle control, which corroborated the results of Part 1.
  • ISHII Kohta, TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 57 (6) 3 - 10 0285-2543 1995/11/01 
    A direct-injection type diesel engine was remodeled to operate on both diesel fuel and biogas. An apparatus was made to generate synthetic biogas which consists of methane and carbon dioxide. The apparatus supplies biogas, which is premixed with intake air stream, into an intake manifold of the engine. The basic performances of the engine for the operation in dual-fuel mode were investigated. It was found that NOx emission decreased approximately 30 to 70% by use of biogas. The tested engine could operate normally even with the biogas which had 40% methane concentration. However, the specific heat consumption increased by supplying biogas under lower loads. Both engine load and biogas flowrate were key parameters for the effective operation of the engine.
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, TERAO Hideo
    Transactions of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers 31 (10) 1762 - 1768 0453-4654 1995 
    To solve the problem of lack of labor and decrease of skilled workers for agriculture and construction industry, we propose the method of creating work schedule for some industrial robots which perform their respective task simultaneously. For obtaining suboptimal feasible solution of the problem which includes two combinational problems, a layered genetic algorithm (LGA) is contrived. The LGA is able to solve the two combinational problems with relevance without increase of calculating load.
    In this paper, we consider an agricultural production system, that is, hay transportation on slope by using two transporting robots and a loading robot. Work schedule for two transporting robots is optimized in the upper layer of the LGA, while work schedule of the loading robot is optimized in the lower layer which is constrained by the upper layer. The proposed method can create work schedule under not only single objective function such as work or work time, but also multi-objective function considering both of them. The schedule made by LGA under the objective function of work can reduce work by up to 56% compared to randomly scheduled situation. The effectiveness of this method is assured by comparing the results with the schedule made by a man with experience of hay transportation. As the quality of the schedule by this method is almost equal to that made by a man with experience, it is also possible to evaluate the ability of workers from the aspect of work efficiency. Finally, we discuss the human decision mechanism on scheduling by identifying the weighting factors for work and work time in multi-objective function.
  • 近江谷 和彦, 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 57 195 - 196 0285-2543 1995
  • 坂田 親紀, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 57 185 - 186 0285-2543 1995
  • 中島 健一郎, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 57 217 - 218 0285-2543 1995
  • 松尾 陽介, 行本 修, 油田 克也, 野口 伸, 入江 康夫, 緒方 成行
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 57 225 - 226 0285-2543 1995
  • 石井 耕太, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 57 37 - 38 0285-2543 1995
  • ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 56 (4) 53 - 60 0285-2543 1994 
    This study intends to make an appropriate control system for a nonlinear vehicle kinematics, in view of developing autonomous agricultural vehicles. The kinematics of vehicles that operate on off-road has higher nonlinearity than that of vehicles on a road. Neural Networks (NN) that can be used to solve nonlinear problems was applied to the vehicle control. It was clear that this controller could give output appropriately for both the trained data and the untrained data. Furthermore, the accuracy of control using the neuro-controller was investigated by comparing with the PID controller, in order to evaluate the ability of neuro-controller as a following control system. It was discovered that the neuro-controller indicated higher accuracy than the PID controller, and it was effective for the vehicle control.
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 56 (2) 83 - 92 0285-2543 1994 
    In order to utilize the agricultural vehicle as an autonomous one, it is necessary to schedule the working route in advance. The vehicle simulator was constructed for both forward and backward movements by neural networks. And genetic algorithms were adopted as an optimization method of a vehicle kinematic. By use of these simulators and genetic algorithms, the time series of the steering angles, that are the control input, were optimized and consequently the working routes of the vehicle were scheduled optimally. As this method divides the route between the initial and terminal conditions into some segments under some constraints and finds the optimal route for each segment, it is possible to create the optimal working route for the complicated conditions including both forward and backward movements.
  • 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 56 349 - 350 0285-2543 1994
  • 野口 伸, 中島 健一郎, 寺尾 日出男, 澁谷 幸憲
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 56 343 - 344 0285-2543 1994
  • 野口 伸, 中島 健一郎, 寺尾 日出男, 澁谷 幸憲
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 56 345 - 346 0285-2543 1994
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 55 (5) 83 - 92 0285-2543 1993 
    The object of this study is to control agricultural vehicle utilizing neural network system (NNS) through nonlinear controller. Kinematics of the vehicle was described as the emulator, that was nonlinear dynamic model, by NNS, and its accuracy was investigated using the training data. The generalization of the emulator for the vehicle was also confirmed by the movement patterns which were not the training data. It was made clear that the output of NNS were in good agreement with the experimental data, and were correcter than the output of the physical model neglecting slip angle. Furthermore, the simpler movements such as lane change and meandering motion were carried out to evaluate the ability of the emulator.
  • OTA Katsuyuki, TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru, IRIMAJIRI Tomohiko, KUBOTA Mamoru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 55 (6) 59 - 67 0285-2543 1993 
    The purpose of this study is to develop a location method for driverless tractor. The principle of measuring location is triangulation using two image sensors set at the corners of a field. A tractor equipped with a target marker was recognized by CCD camera as an image. The CCD camera rotates with a motor to pursue the movement of the target marker. This paper presents the construction of a sensor module which consists of a CCD camera, step motor and potentiometer. An experiment was performed to estimate the accuracy of the system, and the angle and location of the target marker under indoor environment were measured. The result shows that in region of 20m width and 14m length, the error of measurement is less than 8.4cm. A target pursuit system was tested, and it was judged from the data that the pursuit control system provided acceptable performance.
  • 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 55 209 - 210 0285-2543 1993
  • 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 55 207 - 208 0285-2543 1993
  • 酒井 太朗, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 55 3 - 4 0285-2543 1993
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, AN Siangtai, SAKAI Taro, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 54 (3) 97 - 102 0285-2543 1992
  • 近江谷 和彦, 佐野 泰將, 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 54 63 - 64 0285-2543 1992
  • 近江谷 和彦, 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 54 467 - 467 0285-2543 1992
  • 藤田 耕一, 寺尾 日出男, 近江谷 和彦, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 54 15 - 16 0285-2543 1992
  • 酒井 太朗, 野口 伸, 近江谷 和彦, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 54 1 - 2 0285-2543 1992
  • 太田 克行, 野口 伸, 近江谷 和彦, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 54 249 - 250 0285-2543 1992
  • 野口 伸, 近江谷 和彦, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 54 3 - 4 0285-2543 1992
  • 野口 伸, 近江谷 和彦, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 54 424 - 425 0285-2543 1992
  • 野口 伸, 酒井 太朗, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 53 5 - 6 0285-2543 1991
  • 寺尾 日出男, 近江谷 和彦, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 53 7 - 8 0285-2543 1991
  • 近江谷 和彦, 佐野 泰將, 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 53 65 - 66 0285-2543 1991
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 53 (1) 3 - 11 0285-2543 1991 
    The utilization of alcohol as diesel tractor engine fuel was investigated. A personal computer based control system was developed to control the flow rates of gas oil and alcohol. With this control system it was able to use alcohol for a diesel engine in various operating conditions and achieve the important control requirements such as engine speed, torque curve setting and engine stop.
    The alcohol can be supplied up to more than 50 percent of the fuel energy to the engine at full load. This system with the digital PID controller indicated satisfactory performance with quick response to load changes. In case of changing from 4/4 load to no load in 2sec, the maximum speed difference was approximately 13.5 percent and the settling time was about 5sec.
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, AN Siangtai, TERAO Hideo
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 53 (4) 11 - 19 0285-2543 1991 
    The purposes of this paper were to remodel a conventional tractor engine and to demonstrate the feasiblity of using alcohol as alternative fuel for the farm tractor with diesel engine. To investigate the performance of the dual-fuel engine and the static characteristic of the engine control system, a dynamometer was connected to the tractor through a PTO shaft. The performance of the dual-fuel tractor engine was measured in terms of PTO power, BSHC, smoke density, NOx emission and engine noise. The dynamic characteristic of the engine control system was tested under rapid load changes through the release and depression of a clutch pedal. Furthermore, the field tests using a rotary tiller were carried out. The engine control system provided acceptable engine response to the varying load condition in field operation.
  • TERAO Hideo, OHMIYA Kazuhiko, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 52 (1) 11 - 21 0285-2543 1990 
    It is useful to allow a lower proof ethanol to be utilized as a diesel engine fuel by fumigation. This is because hydrated ethanol costs much less per unit of energy produced than does anhydrous ethanol. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of ethanol proof on general engine performance of a diesel engine in terms of brake horsepower, brake specific heat consumption, combustion stability and NOx emission.
    In case of adopting the optimal injection timing of diesel fuel, it was found that the water content in ethanol up to 40w-% showed only a small difference in the brake specific heat consumption as compared with the anhydrous ethanol. The combustion stability for the water content 60w-% was much lower than for the anhydrous ethanol. However, it was also clear that the combustion stability for the water content 60w-% was improved by preheating the air up to 50°C, and the water content 60w-% produced 50% less NOx than the anhydrous ethanol.
  • 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 52 55 - 56 0285-2543 1990
  • 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男, 安 相太
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 52 57 - 58 0285-2543 1990
  • TERAO Hideo, OHMIYA Kazuhiko, NOGUCHI Noboru
    Journal of JSAM The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 51 (3) 5 - 13 0285-2543 1989 
    This paper describes the effects of alcohol atomization and preheating of intake air on the improvement in engine performance and the the reduction of exhaust gas emissions. Two kinds of atomization apparatus with a ultrasonic transducer were devised. One was called "impulse method", which had the characteristic resonant frequency of 29.3kHz, the other was "ultrasonic method", which had that of 1.5MHz. In accordance with the preliminaly experiment using steady air flow through the model intake tube, it was found that the impulse method generated a fine mist of uniformly sized alcohol droplets into the intake tube, and the ultrasonic method excessively promoted vaporization due to minimized droplets. In the engine tests, it was clear that the impulse method was available to improve engine performace and reduce exhaust gas emissions. Under the higher loads, it was also necessary to increase intake temperature up to 70°C. When these conditions were fulfilled, the obtained effects were as follows. Under moderate loads, BSHC was reduced by 5% and as for exhaust emissions, HCHO was by 30% and UBM by 35%. Under the higher loads, both of HCHO and UBM could be reduced by 30% without the increase in BSHC.
  • 寺尾 日出男, 近江谷 和彦, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 51 2 - 2 0285-2543 1989
  • 寺尾 日出男, 近江谷 和彦, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 50 5 - 5 0285-2543 1988
  • 寺尾 日出男, 近江谷 和彦, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 50 4 - 4 0285-2543 1988
  • 寺尾 日出男, 近江谷 和彦, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 49 6 - 6 0285-2543 1987
  • 寺尾 日出男, 近江谷 和彦, 野口 伸
    農業機械学会誌 The Japanese Society of Agricultural Machinery and Food Engineers 49 5 - 5 0285-2543 1987

Books etc

Conference Activities & Talks

MISC

  • 野口伸  映像情報メディア学会誌  73-  (2)  218‐222  2019/03/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  自動車技術  73-  (2)  93‐98  2019/02/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  電気学会誌  139-  (1)  30‐33  2019/01/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  93-  (11)  1005‐1007  2018/11  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  土木学会誌  103-  (9)  20‐21  2018/09/15  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  技術と経済  (616)  30‐36  2018/06/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  アグリバイオ  1-  (13)  1347‐1351  2017/12/20  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  情報処理  58-  (9)  794‐797  -797  2017/08/15  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    日本農業は，農家戸数の減少と就業者の高齢化により労働力不足が深刻である．近年この問題解決策としてITやロボットを活用したスマート農業への期待が高まっている．ロボット化による超省力化技術は日本農業を持続的に発展させる上で不可欠である．このような背景から本稿では今後の進展が期待される農業機械の自動化・ロボット化の現状と将来像について解説した．内閣府戦略的イノベーション創造プログラム（SIP）「次世代農林水産業創造技術」の取り組みや準天頂衛星システム利用など最新の農業ロボット研究を通して農業イノベーションの創出可能性を考察した．
  • 野口伸  技術と普及  54-  (7)  20‐21,16  -32,16  2017/07/15  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 岡田麻友子, 加藤友彬, 野口伸, 石井一暢, 岡本博史  農業食料工学会北海道支部会報  (57)  33‐37  -37  2017/03/31  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  畜産コンサルタント  53-  (3)  12‐16  -16  2017/03/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  機械化農業  (3188)  14‐17  -17  2017/01/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  日本ロボット学会誌  35-  (5)  372‐375(J‐STAGE)  -375  2017  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  農業  (1616)  6‐27  -27  2016/09/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  日本機械学会誌  119-  (1174)  514‐517  -517  2016/09  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  砂糖類・でん粉情報  (44)  2‐6  -6  2016/05/10  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸, 石井一暢  農林水産省農林水産技術会議事務局研究成果  (541)  21  -22  2016/03/31  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸, 石井一暢, 岡本博史, 楊亮亮  農林水産省農林水産技術会議事務局研究成果  (541)  43  -45  2016/03/31  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸, 石井一暢, 岡本博史, 楊亮亮  農林水産省農林水産技術会議事務局研究成果  (541)  77  -81  2016/03/31  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 岡本博史, 野口伸  写真測量とリモートセンシング  55-  (1)  34  -37  2016/03/11  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Hao Wang, Noboru Noguchi  2016 IEEE/SICE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON SYSTEM INTEGRATION (SII)  592  -597  2016  [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    This paper address the problem of motion control of an agricultural robot during the whole process of farming work; including maneuvers to follow straight crop rows inside the field, and operations of lane change at the headland. The navigation sensors consisted of an inertial measurement unit and a real-time kinematic GPS. The control algorithm was able to identify the bias of the yaw angle and compensate lateral deviation caused by inclination of the robotic tractor, in order to guide the robot accurately in the field. A circle-back turning algorithm based on continuous primitives connected together was used at the headland to create reference paths. In addition, steering maneuvers for lane change were performed while the robot tractor is moving in order to protect the surface of the soil at the headland. To follow the path accurately, the slide movement of the tractor and the steering rate were taken into account by estimating the turning radius on real-time. Therefore, guidance paths could be optimized based on the specific condition of the field. Finally, the performance of proposed autonomous maneuvers was evaluated in field experiments.
  • 野口伸  日本ロボット学会誌  34-  (2)  100‐102(J‐STAGE)  -102  2016  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  産学官連携ジャーナル(Web)  11-  (12)  19‐22 (WEB ONLY)  2015/12/15  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  農家の友  67-  (11)  20  -24  2015/11/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Chi Zhang, Noboru Noguchi  2015 IEEE/SICE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON SYSTEM INTEGRATION (SII)  364  -368  2015  [Refereed][Not invited]
     
    Two robot tractors were used in a leader-follower system for agricultural field work. Each of the robots was fully independent and could conduct field work alone. They could also work together to form a certain spatial arrangement during the operation. During the headland turn, each robot was simplified as a rectangular zone, and the two robots cooperated and coordinated to turn to next path without collision. This system was designed for practical application, and the system gains the ability to tolerate most of the disturbances in a real field. Fault tolerant methods in accordance with agricultural work were illustrated to solve the common disturbances from the GPS and the IMU. Field experiments were conducted to determine the effectiveness of the system. The results of the experiments showed that the two robot tractors can work safely together to complete the field work. The average lateral error of the navigation system of the robots was less than 0.04 m, and the efficiency of the leader-follower system was improved by 84.3 percent compared with that of a conventional single robot.
  • 野口伸  精密工学会誌(Web)  81-  (1)  22-25 (J-STAGE)  -25  2015  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  農家の友  66-  (11)  64  -67  2014/11/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  測量  64-  (8)  6  -11  2014/08/10  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  機械化農業  (3152)  31  -34  2014/01/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  技術と普及  50-  (10)  62  2013/10/15  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  自動車技術  67-  (2)  83  -86  2013/02/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口 伸  農家の友  65-  (1)  86  -88  2013/01
  • 原 令幸, 野口 伸, A  農業  (1559)  40  -51  2012/05
  • 野口伸  ブレインテクノニュース  (150)  8  -12  2012/03/15  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口伸  農業  (1557)  34  -45  2012/03/01  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • NOGUCHI Noboru  農林水産技術研究ジャーナル  35-  (2)  10  -15  2012/02/01
  • NOGUCHI Noboru  計測と制御 = Journal of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers  50-  (12)  1025  -1027  2011/12/10
  • 野口 伸  農家の友  63-  (11)  100  -102  2011/11
  • Assessment of water quality of marsh by combing multiple remote sensing platforms with GIS
    Proceedings of CIGR2011 (CD-ROM)  No.22G04  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • K-means based Land Use Supervised Classification
    Proceedings of CIGR2011 (CD-ROM)  No.22G02  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • The Development and Test of a Multi-spectral Camera used in the Crop Growth Status Information Acquisition
    Proceedings of CIGR2011 (CD-ROM)  No.22G03  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Ryosuke Takai, Oscar Barawid Jr., Noboru Noguchi  IFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline)  18-  (1)  14165  -14169  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of this research was to modify a commercial crawler-type tractor into a robot tractor that can be navigated autonomously by using RTK-GPS and IMU as navigation sensors. Navigation algorithms were developed. Steering control test and autonomous navigation test in farmland were conducted. Steering control test was conducted in different speeds, and the accuracy was evaluated. In each speed, the robot ran with 1∼3cm lateral error. Autonomous navigation test was conducted on multi-path map. In headland area, the robot used keyhole turning and transferred to the next path. The robot could finish the multipath navigation successfully. © 2011 IFAC.
  • Development of Robotic Boat for Water Environment Monitoring
    Proceedings of CIGR2011 (CD-ROM)  No.22C03  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Development of an automatic navigation system using laser range finder in the paddy field
    Proceedings of CIGR2011 (CD-ROM)  No.22C02  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Xiang Yin, Noboru Noguchi  IFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline)  18-  (1)  14139  -14144  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    This paper presents how to detect and track the real-time motion using the PMD 3D-camera. Different modalities, including intensity image, range image and amplitude image, can be provided by the 3D-camera. Both the intensity and the range images are used in the motion detection and tracking process. First, intensity and range backgrounds are separately modeled. During the motion detection and tracking, the segmentation results based on intensity and range images are combined, which results in a robust segmentation of the current scene. And such a segmented image has to be filtered in real-time applications because the NIR light emitted by the 3D-camera will be affected by the objects too close to the 3D-camera, resulting in intensity distortion, and low resolution of the intensity image constitutes another reason. After segmentation, edge and contour detection is used to try to figure out the number and positions of mobile objects. By experiments, the process of real-time motion detection and tracking is demonstrated. Finally, some existing problems and proposed solutions such as shadow removal are discussed. © 2011 IFAC.
  • Liangliang Yang, Fuzeng Yang, Noboru Noguchi  IFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline)  18-  (1)  14145  -14150  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    Classify the apple's internal quality is important for apple's quality. Mould core apple is not eatable and can reduce the juice quality if used for making juice. The core tissue's color is brown and the density of mould core apple is lower than a normal apple. This paper describes the detection of apple's one internal quality (mould core disease) on the physical basis - density. X-ray technology can provide us internal image of an object that reflects the object's density. This paper presents the method of processing the X-ray image and creating the feature vector for using support vector machine (SVM) method to classify the apple's internal quality. The experiment results show that the classification method could detect the mould core apple at the accuracy of 91.03%, and detect un-mould core apple at the accuracy of around 95.95%. © 2011 IFAC.
  • Oscar C. Barawid Jr., Noboru Noguchi  IFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline)  18-  (1)  2901  -2906  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    This research developed an automatic steering system for electronic robot vehicles that is economical in comparison with commercial automatic steering systems today. A 48-VDC battery-operated electronic vehicle was used as a platform that has been modified the steering system into an automatic steering system using the following steps. First, the motor specification determination using strain gauges attached to the steering shaft second, steering controller method/algorithm selection third, steering system calibration fourth, steering angle determination and finally, autonomous navigation test runs. The lateral and heading errors were 0.08 m and 1.2 deg, respectively. These results indicated that the developed automatic steering system could control the robot vehicle accurately in an autonomous navigation. © 2011 IFAC.
  • Issei Han-Ya, Kazunobu Ishii, Noboru Noguchi  IFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline)  18-  (1)  1796  -1801  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    This research developed a system which monitors the growth of paddy rice by using a lowaltitude remote sensing using spectroradiometer. In the crop yields' estimation, the wavelength band of an ultraviolet range or a short wave infrared region was essential for the estimation of the result of the PLS regression analysis or the multiple linear regression analysis. Using these information, the estimation error of the crop yield was 12.8 [kg/10a]. Moreover, the estimation error of protein content was 0.14% by using the near infrared and the short wave infrared information. In addition, the estimation models were applied to the other paddy field. There were also high relationship between the crop status and the measured wavelength. These results suggested that this low-altitude remote sensing system was able to obtain the variation of the crop status in the paddy rice fields. In addition, the information of the wavelength in short wave infrared was important to estimate the crop status. © 2011 IFAC.
  • Noboru Noguchi, Oscar C. Barawid Jr.  IFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline)  18-  (1)  633  -637  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    The objective of the research is to develop a robot farming system using multiple robots. The research will discuss the application of multiple robots in Japan agriculture for rice, wheat and soybean. The robot farming system includes a rice planting robot, a seeding robot, a robot tractor, a combine robot harvester and various implements attached on the robot tractor. One of the key elements of the robot farming system is that it should be more economical to the farmers. The important parts of the farming system are the robot management system, low-cost system, robot farming safety, and real-time monitoring/documentation. Keywords: multiple robots, robotics, robot farming system, robot tractors, robot management system, low-cost system. © 2011 IFAC.
  • Development of a 2-CMOS Camera for Agricultural Use
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O42  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • CF Card Storage Module Based on MCU
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O43  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Omni-directional moving objects detection based on the optical flow field image
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O40  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Development of an Obstacle Recognition System for a Field Robot using a 3D-camera
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O41  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Low-altitude Remote Sensing for Monitoring Marsh and Lake
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O36  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Land Use Classification of Satellite Imagery using Minimum Distance Classifier
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O31  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Development of Robotic Boat for Water Environment Monitoring
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O24  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Autonomous Rice Transplanter Using DGPS Compass and Machine Vision
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O21  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Development of an automatic navigation system using laser range finder in the paddy field
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O20  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Monitoring Winter Wheat Growth Using Plant Nutrition Active Sensor
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O14  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Development of Variable Rate Fertilization System using Low-cost ECU and Plant Nutrition Sensor
    Proceedings of the 4th Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture (CD-ROM)  No.O13  2011  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 速水 敦郎, 姜 太煥, 海津 裕, 野口 伸  農業機械學會誌  72-  (6)  515  -515  2010/11/01
  • 野口 伸  建設の施工企画  (728)  58  -61  2010/10/25
  • 野口 伸  農業および園芸  85-  (10)  1037  -1044  2010/10
  • 横堀 潤, 野口 伸, 丹羽 勝久, 西宗 昭  日本土壌肥料学会講演要旨集  (56)  149  -149  2010/09/07
  • NOGUCHI Noboru  Journal of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers  113-  (1100)  511  -511  2010/07/05
  • NOGUCHI Noboru  Systems, control and information  54-  (4)  144  -148  2010/04/15
  • Application of Rapeseed Oil to a Diesel Engine
    Proceedings of AGRICONTROL 2010 IFAC International Conference（CD-ROM）  0037  2010  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Remote Sensing of Lakes and Marshes Using Helicopter Based System
    Proceedings of AGRICONTROL 2010 IFAC International Conference（CD-ROM）  0032  2010  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • TAKAI R.  IFAC Proceedings, 2010  0025  -1  2010  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Monitoring Rice Growth Environment by Low-altitude Remote Sensing using Spectroradiometer
    Proceedings of AGRICONTROL 2010 IFAC International Conference（CD-ROM）  0031  2010  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口 伸, 丹羽 勝久, 横堀 潤, 西 宗昭  北農  76-  (4)  478  -487  2009/10  
    肥料の高騰で土壌診断依頼点数が急増し、受け入れ能力を超える診断の依頼のある施設もあると報道された。土壌診断は、土壌採取、前処理、分析、診断の手順に、多くの労力、時間、経費を要し、しかも圃場単位での診断になる。一方、窒素に限るが、自動操縦ヘリコプタにセンサを搭載すれば、短時間に面的に土壌診断、結果を精密マップ化し、圃場内の窒素供給量に応じて施肥量を調節できる。さらに、作物の生育、収量・品質をこうした土壌診断マップと重ねて解析し、技術改善情報も提供できる。上記の両者とも可能になっているが、ここでは前者に相当する、［土壌窒素供給能としての熱水可溶性窒素の意義］、［産業用無人ヘリコプタによる土壌窒素供給能を含む圃場情報の精密リモートセンシング］、［土壌窒素供給能情報を用いた可変施肥システム］を中心に、一連の研究の経緯、概要を紹介する。
  • NOGUCHI Noboru  計測と制御 = Journal of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers  48-  (2)  130  -133  2009/02/10
  • Monitoring rice growth environment by remote sensing
    IFAC-Bio‐Robotics Ⅳ(CD-ROM)  802  2009  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Evaluation of ultrasonic sensors as guidance sensors for greenhouse applications robots
    IFAC-Bio‐Robotics Ⅳ(CD-ROM)  706  2009  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Navigation of agricultural robot using omnidirectional camera in grass land
    IFAC-Bio‐Robotics Ⅳ(CD-ROM)  705  2009  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Development of low-cost and small-scale electronic robot vehicle for orchard application
    IFAC-Bio‐Robotics Ⅳ(CD-ROM)  206  2009  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Automatic steering system for the electronic robot vehicle
    IFAC-Bio‐Robotics Ⅳ(CD-ROM)  204  2009  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Satellite and Aerial Remote Sensing for Production Estimates and Crop Assessment
    IFAC-Bio‐Robotics Ⅳ(CD-ROM)  601  2009  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Spatial information analysis of grass-land using information technology
    Proceedings of the 17th IFAC World Congress  653  -657  2008  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Development of the biogas tractor with two biogas feeding algorithms
    Proceedings of the 17th IFAC World Congress  1602  -1607  2008  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Estimating hay bale position with stereo vision technique using an omnidirectional camera
    Proceedings of the 17th IFAC World Congress  1584  -1589  2008  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Calibration method for 2-dimensional laser scanner attached on a robot vehicle
    Proceedings of the 17th IFAC World Congress  1596  -1601  2008  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Enhancement of NDV information from satellite imagery by combining with low altitude sensing
    Proceedings of the 17th IFAC World Congress  9579  -9584  2008  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • The study on the effect of biogas addition on the diesel tractor engine for the development of a biogas controller
    Proceedings of the 17th IFAC World Congress.  9585  -9590  2008  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, FUJIWARA Tatsuya  地理情報システム学会講演論文集 = Papers and proceedings of the Geographic Information Systems Association  16-  41  -44  2007/10/20
  • 野口 伸  ロボット  (177)  15  -19  2007/07
  • MATSUI Takatoshi, INOUE Tetsuo, ISHII Kazunobu, NOGUCHI Noboru  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2007-  "1A1  -H03(1)"-"1A1-H03(4)"  2007/05/11  
    The objective of our research is to robotize an agricultural crawler tractor based on a previously developed autonomous wheeled tractor. The navigation sensors used for this purpose were RTK-GPS based on VRS (Virtual Reference Station) as well as FOG. The RTK-GPS provided the absolute position of the tractor, while FOG gave its heading angle. The tractor was modified by the manufacturer to allow electronic control of several functions including steering; which was performed by differentiating speeds of left and right tracks.
  • Development of hay bales detection algorithm using omnidirectional multi-camera
    2nd IFAC International Conference on Modeling and Design of Control System in Agriculture  211  -216  2007  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Automatic guidance system in coconut field application using laser scanner
    2nd IFAC International Conference on Modeling and Design of Control System in Agriculture  171  -176  2007  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Real-time image transformation using a dynamic inclinometer
    2nd IFAC International Conference on Modeling and Design of Control System in Agriculture  177  -181  2007  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Enhancement of NDVI information from satellite imagery by integrating an unmanned helicopter
    Proc. 2nd Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture  DV-10  2007  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Spatial information analysis of grass-land using information technology
    Proc. 2nd Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture  DD-17  2007  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • A development of a low-cost dual-spectral camera system
    Proc. 2nd Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture  SV-16  2007  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Development of lodging forecast model by remote sensing
    Proc. 2nd Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture  DD-04  2007  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Effect of feeding biogas into diesel engine's intake manifold; focusing on emissions
    Proc. International Conference of Progress in Biogas  101  -104  2007  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 丹羽 勝久, 横堀 潤, 榎本 吉典, 野口 伸  日本土壌肥料学会講演要旨集  (52)  130  -130  2006/09/05
  • HAN-YA Issei, ISHII Kazunobu, NOGUCHI Noboru  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2006-  "2P2  -C12(1)"-"2P2-C12(2)"  2006  
    Recently, field imageries became easy to obtain by QuickBird-2, SPOT and other satellites ; however, they are still negatively affected by atmospheric conditions, and their spatial resolution remains fairly low causing large position errors. Moreover, a large number of reference points is also required to estimate the field conditions accurately. The objective of this study is to develop a reliable field monitoring system combining helicopter-base and satellite-base remote-sensing. An ambient illumination (AI) sensor was attached to the unmanned helicopter to compensate for the effect of atmospheric conditions. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of satellite images is transformed to reflectance value through corresponding images acquired by the unmanned helicopter, which are then used for calibration of satellite imagery. Therefore, the helicopter-base system effectively contributes to the enhancement of the satellite-base remote-sensing.
  • KANG Tae-Hwan, SIRAMIZU Kazuhiro, ISHII Kazunobu, NOGUCHI Noboru  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2006-  "2A1  -B17(1)"-"2A1-B17(4)"  2006  
    The objective of this research is to develop a field irregularity modifying system using work chracteristics of harvesting and generating GIS maps based on measured terrain information. To generate a GIS map based on the work chracteristics of harvesting and terrain information, vehicle location is essential; therefore a Real Time Kinematical Global Positioning System (RTK-GPS) provided vehicle positions, and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) provided direction and inclination angles, and a laser scanner provided terrain information of the field. The system was built on a robot tractor and commercial tractor. The result shown an average error of 5.2 cm and an RMS error of 2.9 cm when the laser was scanning beneath the robot tractor, which is sufficient for terrain surveying. The area where working characteristics is bad can be distinguished by the discriminant analysis using explanation variable of synthetic vector and inclination angle.
  • NOGUCHI Noboru  農林水産技術研究ジャーナル = Research Journal of Food and Agriculture  28-  (11)  5  -9  2005/11/01
  • Yokota Masahiko, Mizushima Akira, Ishii Kazunobu, Noguchi Noboru  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2005-  163  -163  2005/06/09
  • Iwahori Takashi, Sugiura Ryo, Noguchi Noboru, Ishii Kazunobu  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2005-  207  -207  2005/06/09
  • Barawid, O. C. Jr., Tsubota, R., Ishii, K., Noguchi, N.:"Agricultural autonomous vehicle that used 2-dimensional laser scanner as the navigation sensor", Proceedings of First Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture: 89-94(2005)
    2005  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura, R., Ishii, K., Noguchi, N.:"Development of Monitoring System to Support Operations of an Unmanned Helicopter". ASAE Paper No.051019(2005)
    2005  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Mizushima, A., Ishii, K., Noguchi, N.: "Development of Robot Tractor Using the Low-Cost GPS/INS System", ASAE Paper No.051138(2005)
    2005  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura, R., Ishii, K., Noguchi, N.:"Remote sensing technology for field information using an unmanned helicopter", Proceedings of First Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture: 187-192(2005)
    2005  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Yokota, M., Mizushima, A.,Ishii, K.,Noguchi, N.:"3-D GIS Map Generation Using a Robot Tractor with a Laser Scanner", ASAE Paper No.051141(2005)
    2005  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Iwahori, T., Sugiura, R., Ishii, K., Noguchi,N.:"Development of 3-D GIS Map Generation System Using an Unmanned Helicopter", ASAE Paper No.051020(2005)
    2005  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Ishii, K., Noguchi, N.:"Development of ECU for variable rate application using ISOBUS", Proceedings of First Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture: 59-64(2005)
    2005  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Tae-Hwan, K., Sugiura, R., Noguchi, N., Ishii, K., Niwa, K., Yokobori, J.:"Estimation of growth information on wheat using multi-spectrum image sensor", Proceedings of First Asian Conference on Precision Agriculture: 236-241(2005)
    2005  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura R, Noguchi N, Ishii K  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2004-  206  -206  2004/06/18
  • Yokobori,J.,Niwa,K.,Noguchi and N.,Chiba,Y:"Drawing of precise countermeasure map within a field by using unmanned helicopter image in Tokachi District", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment:447-454(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura,R.,Fukagawa,T.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"Crop Status Sensing System by a Multi-Spectral Imaging Sensor and GIS map generation", Proceedings of 2004 CIGR International Conference, [V-2-19(CD-ROM)](2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Mizushima,A.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"Monitoring system of peat areas using agricultural robot", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment:467-473(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Yokota,M.,Tsubota,R.,Mizushima,A.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"Field Map Generation by an Intelligent Robot Tractor towards Information Agriculture", Proceedings of AgEng 2004[454(CD-ROM)](2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi,N: "Current Status and R&D Activities Utilizing Mechatronics in Agriculture in Japan", Proceedings of The second International Symposium on Machinery and Mechatronics for Agriculture and Bio-systems Engineering [ME-1(CD-ROM)](2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Mizushima,A.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"Automatic navigation of agricultural vehicle using a low-cost attitude sensor", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment: 98-106(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Terao,H.,Noguchi,N. and Ishii,K.:"Multi-robot Systems for Farm Operations", Proceedings of International Scientific Conference on Microprocessor Systems in Agriculture:212-224(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Ishii, K.and Noguchi, N.:"Task management and control system for multi-robot using wireless LAN", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment:56-63(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Yokota,M.,Mizushima,A.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"3-D map generation by a robot tractor equipped with a laser range finder", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment:374-379(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura, R.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"Remote sensing technology for field Information using an unmanned helicopter", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment:226-231(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura,R.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"Simplification method of topographic map using triangle polygons", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment:474-479(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Iwahori,T.,Sugiura,R.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N:"Remote sensing using an unmanned helicopter with a control pan-head", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment: 220-225(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Tsubota,R.,Mizushima,A.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"Automatic guidance with a laser scanner for a robot tractor in an orchard field", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment:369-373 (2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura,R.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"Remote Sensing Technology for 3-D Vegetation Monitoring using an Unmanned Helicopter", Proceedings of AgEng 2004[450(CD-ROM)](2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura,R.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"Field Survey System Using an Unmanned Helicopter and Simplification of Topographic Dataset", Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Precision Agriculture(CD-ROM)(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Mizushima,A.,Noguchi,N. and Reid,J.F.:"Automatic navigation of agricultural vehicle using a cheap attitude sensor", Proceedings of AgEng 2004[451(CD-ROM)](2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Tsubota,R.,Mizushima,A.,Noguchi,N. and Reid,J.F:"Automatic Guidance with a Laser Scanner for a Robot Tractor in an Orchard Field", Proceedings of 2004 CIGR International Conference[V-2-9(CD-ROM)](2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Mizushima,A.,Tsubota,R. and Noguchi,N.:"3D-Map Generation by a Robot Tractor with a Laser Range Finder",Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Precision Agriculture(CD-ROM)(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Abe,M.,Sugiura,R.,Ishii,K. and Noguchi,N.:"Enhancement of satellite imagery using an unmanned helicopter for environment monitoring", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment:232-237(2004)*
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Niwa,K.,Seino,N.,Yokobori,J.,Kukuchi,K. and Noguchi:"Drawing of precise countermeasure map concerned with wheat maturity by using large-scaled soil map in Tokachi District", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment・・・
    2004  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    Niwa,K.,Seino,N.,Yokobori,J.,Kukuchi,K. and Noguchi:"Drawing of precise countermeasure map concerned with wheat maturity by using large-scaled soil map in Tokachi District", Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment:455-462(2004)*
  • 野口 伸  農業および園芸  78-  (12)  1332  -1336  2003/12
  • NOGUCHI N.  農業機械學會誌  65-  (4)  3  -3  2003/07/01
  • Fukagawa T., Noguchi N., Ishii K., Terao H.  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2003-  15  -15  2003  
    精密農法のための生物モニタリングシステムを構築した, R, G及びNIRの3波長画像を同時に取得できるマルチスペクトルイメージングセンサを用いている。稲, トウモロコシについてその画像処理アルゴリズムとセンシング精度について検討した。
  • Abe G., Noguchi N., Ishii K., Terao H.  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2003-  15  -15  2003  
    複数の農業用ロボットによる協調作業において, ロボットの相互認識が重要である。本研究では先行ロボットを認識するためにレーザ測距器を採用しパターンマッチングを行うことで追従ロボットが先行ロボットの姿勢を認識できるアルゴリズムを開発した。
  • Sugiura R., Noguchi N., Ishii K., Terao H.  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2003-  14  -14  2003  
    産業用無人ヘリコプタに搭載したレーザ距離計から農地の3次元点群を得ることができる。これら地表面上の点群を補間することによって地形マップを作成し, RTK-GPSによって正確に測量した地形データとの比較を行った。
  • 産業用無人ヘリコプタを用いた空間情報のマッピング
    農業機械学会北海道支部会報  43-  49  -54  2003  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Mizushima,A.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.: Development of the Automatic Navigation System using DGPS and Posture Sensor. ASAE Paper No.033110 (2003)
    2003  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Kise,M.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.: Obstacle Detection by a Laser Scanner for Autonomous Off-road Vehicles. ASAE Paper No.033111 (2003)
    2003  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Mizushima,A.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.: Development of Navigation Sensor unit for the Agricultural Vehicle. Proceedings of IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics: 1067-1072(2003)*
    2003  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Fukagawa,T.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.: Detecting Growth of Crop System by Multi-spectral Imaging Sensor. ASAE Paper No.033125(2003)
    2003  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura,R.,Fukagawa,T.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.,Shibata,Y.,Toriyama,K. (2003) Field Information System using an Agricultural Helicopter towards Precision Farming. Proceedings of IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronic・・・
    2003  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    Sugiura,R.,Fukagawa,T.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.,Shibata,Y.,Toriyama,K. (2003) Field Information System using an Agricultural Helicopter towards Precision Farming. Proceedings of IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics: 1073-1078(2003)*
  • Ishii,K.,Noguchi,N.,Terao,H.: Multi-robot Management System using Wireless LAN. ASAE Paper No. 033079(2003)
    2003  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura,R.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H. (2003) Development of Remote Sensing System using Unmanned Helicopter. ASAE Paper No.031104(2003)
    2003  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • マルチスペクトルイメージングセンサを用いた生育モニタリングシステムの水稲への適用
    農業機械学会北海道支部会報  43-  37  -42  2003  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi,N.: Obstacle Detection for an Autonomous Vehicle using a Laser Range Finder. ASAE Paper No.031169(2003)
    2003  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Horioka Y., Noguchi N., Ishii K., Terao H.  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2002-  87  -87  2002  
    農用移植ロボットを群として協調作業させることにより, 農作業の効率化と省力化を図ることを目的とする。2台のロボットトラクタを使用し, それらに意思決定者 (Master) と従事者 (Slave) という上下関係を持たせたシステムを想定している。2台の車両には光ファイバージャイロ (FOG) 及びRTK-GPSが搭載されており, 絶対座標や車両方位といった車両情報を取得し, 個々の車両情報は無線LANを用い車々間通信を行う。今回は主に2台のロボットトラクタの併走制御について報告する。
  • Noguchi,N.,Kise,M.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.:Field Automation Using Robot Tractor. Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment: 239-245(2002)*
    2002  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Kise,M.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.: The Development of the Autonomous Tractor with Steering Controller Applied by Optimal Control. Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment: 367-373(2002)*
    2002  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Will,J.D.,Reid,J.F.,Noguchi,N.,Zhang,Q.: Software Architecture Design for Automation of Off-road Equipment. Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment:43-50 (2002)*
    2002  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Kise,M.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.: Enhancement of Turning Accuracy by Path Planning for Robot Tractor. Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment: 398-404(2002)*
    2002  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Mizushima,A.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.: Automatic Navigation of the Agricultural Vehicle by the Geomagnetic Direction Sensor and Gyroscope. Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment: 204-211(2002)*
    2002  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Sugiura,R.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.: The Development of Remote Sensing System Using Unmanned Helicopter. Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment: 120-128(2002)*
    2002  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi,N.,Will,J.D.,Ishii,K.,Reid,J.F.:Development of Master-slave Robot System-Obstacle Avoidance Algorithm. Proceedings of ASAE Conference of Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment: 432-441(2002)*
    2002  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 行本 修, 松尾 陽介, 野口 伸  Technical report of the Institute of Agricultural Machinery  (32)  89  -96  2001/09
  • 行本 修, 松尾 陽介, 野口 伸  農業機械化研究所研究報告  (32)  1  -88  2001/09
  • Kise M., Noguchi N., Ishii K., Terao H.  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2001-  76  -76  2001/06/08
  • Noguchi N., Miura R., Ishii K., Terao H.  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2001-  76  -76  2001/06/08
  • Mizushima A., Noguchi N., Ishii K., Terao H.  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2001-  75  -75  2001/06/08
  • Noguchi N., Kise M., Ishii K., Terao H.  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2001-  76  -76  2001/06/08
  • NOGUCHI Noboru  農林水産技術研究ジャーナル  24-  (6)  5  -10  2001/06/01
  • 石井 一暢, 堀岡 裕二, 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男  農業機械学会年次大会講演要旨  60-  247  -248  2001/04/01
  • 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男, 野口 伸  農業機械学会年次大会講演要旨  60-  245  -246  2001/04/01
  • 宮本 健太郎, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男  農業機械学会年次大会講演要旨  60-  273  -274  2001/04/01
  • 三浦 隆司, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男  農業機械学会年次大会講演要旨  60-  365  -366  2001/04/01
  • 木瀬 道夫, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男  農業機械学会年次大会講演要旨  60-  263  -264  2001/04/01
  • 野口 伸, 飯塚 学, 木瀬 道夫, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男  農業機械学会年次大会講演要旨  60-  265  -266  2001/04/01
  • 石井 一暢, 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男  農業機械学会年次大会講演要旨  60-  267  -268  2001/04/01
  • 水島 晃, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男, 行本 修, 山本 聡史  農業機械学会年次大会講演要旨  60-  277  -278  2001/04/01
  • 山本 聡史, 行本 修, 手島 司, 野口 伸  農業機械学会年次大会講演要旨  60-  447  -448  2001/04/01
  • Noguchi,N.,Zhang,Q.,Han,S.,Reid,J.F.:"Autonomous Agricultural Tractor with an Intelligent Navigation System",Proceedings of the Fourth IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles:200-206(2001)*
    2001  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi,N.,Reid,J.F.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.:"Multi-spectrum Image Sensor for Detecting Crop Status by Robot Tractor", Proceedings of the Fourth IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles:115-120(2001)*
    2001  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Kise,M.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.:"Development of the Agricultural Autonomous Tractor with an RTK-GPS and Fog", Proceedings of the Fourth IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles:103-108(2001)*
    2001  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi,N.,Reid,J.F.,Zhang,Q.,Will,J.D.,Ishii,K.: "Development of Robot Tractor Based on RTK-GPS and Gyroscope", ASAE paper,01-1195: 1-8(2001)
    2001  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi,N.,Reid,J.F.,Zhang,Q.,Will,J.D.: "Turning Function for Robot Tractor Based on Spline Function",ASAE paper,01-1196:1-8(2001)
    2001  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi,N.,Reid,J.F.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.:"Crop Status Sensing based on Machine Vision for Precision Farming", Proceedings of the 2nd IFAC/CIGR Workshop on Intelligent Control for Agricultural Applications:34-39(2001)*
    2001  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.:"Turning Function Based on Dynamic Path Creation for Agricultural Mobile Robot",Proceedings of the Fourth IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles:193-199(2001)*
    2001  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Mizushima,A.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.,Yukumoto,O.,Yamamoto,S.:"Automatic Guidance System based on Sensor Fusion with Geomagnetic Direction Sensor and Gyroscope", Proceedings of the Fourth IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles: 109-114(2・・・
    2001  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    Mizushima,A.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.,Yukumoto,O.,Yamamoto,S.:"Automatic Guidance System based on Sensor Fusion with Geomagnetic Direction Sensor and Gyroscope", Proceedings of the Fourth IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles: 109-114(2001)*
  • Noguchi,N.,Kise,M.,Reid,J.F.,Zhang,Q.:"Autonomous Vehicle Based on GPS and Inertial Sensors",Proceedings of the 2nd IFAC/CIGR Workshop on Intelligent Control for Agricultural Applications:105-110(2001)*
    2001  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 石井 一暢, 飯田 岳, 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2000-  46  -46  2000  
    本研究はマシンビジョンを使用することで, リアルタイムに作物の窒素栄養ストレスを検出可能なセンサを開発することを目的としている。屋外環境下で使用するセンサの開発は, 計測する光エネルギ波長域の決定, 光源の変化にともなう外乱の補償が重要な鍵を握る。波長域の決定には, 分光測色計を用いて作物葉面の反射率を計測し, SPAD値と相関の高い波長域を決定した。光源変化には, 近赤外領域分光を用いて太陽の日射量を推定することで入出力エネルギ変化の補償を行った。
  • 木瀬 道夫, 野口 伸, 石井 一暢, 寺尾 日出男  ロボティクス・メカトロニクス講演会講演概要集  2000-  46  -46  2000  
    本研究は水田作・畑作・牧草作業における1年間の農作業すべてに作用できる農用移動ロボットの開発を目的としている。そのためには作業ロボットが広範な作業速度に対応できる必要がある。本研究ではRTK-GPSと光ファイバージャイロを航法センサに用いて作業速度2.0m/sでの自律作業を実現した。またほ場ナビゲーションマップをGISによって生成し, マップに基づいたガイダンスシステムにより各種作業を自律化した。
  • 野口伸  今月の農業  12-  27  -31  2000
  • Noguchi,N.,Kise,M.,Ishii,K. and Terao,H.: Dynamic Path Planning based on Spline Function for Agricultural Mobile Robot, Proceedings of the XIV Memorial CIGR World Congress,943-946(2000)*
    2000  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Pinto,F.A.C,Reid,J.F,Zhang,Q.and Noguchi,N.:"Vision Sensor Position For Guidance by Using Pose-Guidance Algorithm(PGA)", Proceedings of 2nd IFAC/CIGR International Workshop on Bio-Robotics, Information Technology and Intelligent Control for Bioproducti・・・
    2000  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    Pinto,F.A.C,Reid,J.F,Zhang,Q.and Noguchi,N.:"Vision Sensor Position For Guidance by Using Pose-Guidance Algorithm(PGA)", Proceedings of 2nd IFAC/CIGR International Workshop on Bio-Robotics, Information Technology and Intelligent Control for Bioproduction Systems,173-177(2000)*
  • Noguchi,N. and Reid,J.F.:"Engineering Challenges in Agricultural Mobile Robot towards Information Agriculture", Proceedings of the XIV Memorial CIGR World Congress,147-154(2000)*
    2000  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Kise,M.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K. and Terao,H.:"Communication Systems forMulti Robot Systems", Proceedings of 2nd IFAC/CIGR International Workshop on Bio-Robotics, Information Technology and Intelligent Control for Bioproduction Systems:82-85(2000)*
    2000  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Pinto,F.A.C,Reid,J.F,Zhang,Q. and Noguchi,N.:"Pose-Guidance Algorithm Performance for Different Crop Stages of Development", Proceedings of 2nd IFAC/CIGR International Workshop on Bio-Robotics, Information Technology and Intelligent Control for Bioprod・・・
    2000  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    Pinto,F.A.C,Reid,J.F,Zhang,Q. and Noguchi,N.:"Pose-Guidance Algorithm Performance for Different Crop Stages of Development", Proceedings of 2nd IFAC/CIGR International Workshop on Bio-Robotics, Information Technology and Intelligent Control for Bioproduction Systems,167-172(2000)*
  • Mizushima,A.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.,Yukumoto,O. and Yamamoto,S.:"Automatic Guidance Composed of GeoMagnetic Direction Sensor and Fiber Optic Gyroscope", Proceedings of 2nd IFAC/CIGR International Workshop on Bio-Robotics, Information Technology a・・・
    2000  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    Mizushima,A.,Noguchi,N.,Ishii,K.,Terao,H.,Yukumoto,O. and Yamamoto,S.:"Automatic Guidance Composed of GeoMagnetic Direction Sensor and Fiber Optic Gyroscope", Proceedings of 2nd IFAC/CIGR International Workshop on Bio-Robotics, Information Technology and Intelligent Control for Bioproduction Systems, 311-315(2000)*
  • Zhang, Q., Reid,J., Noguchi, N.: “Agricultural Vehicle Navigation using Multiple Guidance Sensors", Proceedings of FSR'99 International Conference on Field and Service Robotics:1-6(1999)
    1999  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi,N: "Work Schedule Creation for Agriculturral Mobile Robots using Genetic Algorithms", Proceedings of 1999 IFAC World Congress:425-429(1999)*
    1999  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi,N., Reid,J., Hansen,A., Zhang,Q., Tian,L.: "Vision Intelligence for an Autonomous Vehicle based on an artificial Neural Network, Fuzzy Logic and a Genetic Algorithm", Proceedings of 1999 IFAC World Congress:419-424(1999)*
    1999  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Pinto, F.A.C., Reid,J., Zhang,Q., Noguchi,N.:“Guidance Parameter Determination using Artificial Neural Network Classifier", ASAE Paper 993004:1-10(1999)
    1999  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Zhang, Q., Reid,J., Noguchi,N.:“Automated Guidance Control for Agricultural Tractors using Redundant Sensors", SAE Technical Paper 1999-01-1874: 1-5(1999)
    1999  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口 伸  農業機械學會誌  60-  (3)  2  -2  1998/05/01
  • Noguchi, N., Reid, J., Benson, E., Stombaugh, T.: Vision Intelligence for an Agricultural Mobile Robot using A Neural Network, Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture; 152-157 (1998)*
    1998  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi, N., Reid, J., Will, J., Benson, E., Stombaugh, T.: Vehicle Automation System based on Multi-sensor Integration, ASAE Paper No.983111:1-10(1998)
    1998  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • Noguchi, N., Reid, J., Zhang, Q., Tian, L.:Vision Intelligence for Precision Farming using Fuzzy Logic Optimized Genetic Agorithm and Artificial Neural Network, ASAE Paper No.983034: 1-10(1998)
    1998  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 野口 伸, 行本 修, 松尾 陽介  自動化技術  29-  (1)  71  -75  1997/01
  • Noguchi, N., Matsuo, Y., Suzuki, M. : "Development of a Tillage Robot uisng a Position Sensing Sysytem and a Geomagnetic Direction Sensor", ASAE No. 973090 : 1-12 (1997)
    1997  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • NOGUCHI Noboru, TERAO Hideo  計測自動制御学会論文集  30-  (1)  64  -71  1994/01/31
  • K. Ohmiya, N. Noguchi, H. Terao  Journal of Terramechanics  30-  (3)  181  -190  1993  [Not refereed][Not invited]
     
    To investigate soil physical conditions affected by soil compaction or tillage, a computer controlled cone resistance measuring system and visualization software for generating cone resistance distribution maps were developed. A cone resistance measuring system was developed so that the coordinates of the measuring point were chosen at any location in a 1.5 × 2 m horizontal x-y plane. Then, using, a series of cone resistances with x, y, z coordinates was measured. A portable computer was selected to measure and acquire the series of cone resistances. This computer was used to set the location of the cone, to operate a strain amplifier for measuring cone resistance and to measure the location of data. The visualization software generates two- and three-dimensional maps. x-z, y-z and x-y cross section are generated in two-dimensional maps. Plane and view point may be selected from a three-dimensional map. Using this system, cone resistance of 1.5 m with × 2.0 m length × 0.6 m depth in several fields was measured. Cone resistance distribution maps of two and three dimensions were generated by the visualization software. It was concluded that two- and three-dimensional distribution maps gave us information that we could not obtain from a map of one cross section. © 1993.
  • 野口 伸, 酒井 太朗, 寺尾 日出男  農業機械学会誌  54-  (4)  19  -27  1992  [Not refereed][Not invited]
  • 近江谷 和彦, 松見 高俊, 野口 伸, 寺尾 日出男  北海道大学農学部邦文紀要  15-  (3)  242  -248  1987/03/26
  • 寺尾 日出男, 近江谷 和彦, 松見 高俊, 野口 伸  Memoirs of the Faculty of Agriculture,Hokkaido University  15-  (2)  p173  -185  1987

Industrial Property Rights

Awards & Honors

  • 2022/06 Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications ”Information and Communications Month" Commendation by the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications
  • 2020/09 日本生物環境工学会 パラダイム・シフト大賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2017 日本生物環境工学会 特別研究功績賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2017 総務省北海道総合通信局 北海道総合通信局長表彰
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2017 北海道 北海道科学技術賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2016 農業情報学会 新農林社国際賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2016 読売新聞社 読売農学賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2016 日本農学会 日本農学賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2015 日本農業工学会 フェロー
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2015 日本農業工学会 日本農業工学会賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2014 日本生物環境工学会 論文賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2013 日本生物環境工学会 フェロー
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2013 内閣府 宇宙開発利用大賞内閣府特命担当大臣（宇宙政策）賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2013 農業情報学会 フェロー
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2012 Royal Academy of Engineering Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Award
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2012 北海道大学 研究総長賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2011 日本生物環境工学会 特別国際学術賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2010 農業機械学会 論文賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2006 農業情報学会 橋本賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2006 農業情報学会 学術賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2003 農業情報学会 奨励賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2001 米国農業工学会(ASAE) Best-Paper Award
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2000 国際農業工学会(CIGR) 技術貢献賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 2000 農業機械学会 森技術賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 1998 農業機械学会 学術賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 1997 日本機械学会 ロボティクス・メカトロニクス部門賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸
  • 1994 農業機械学会 研究奨励賞
     
    受賞者: 野口 伸

Research Grants & Projects

  • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science：Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research
    Date (from‐to) : 2008 -2012 
    Author : NOGUCHI Noboru, HIRANO Takashi, HATANO Ryusuke, YAMADA Hiroyuki, ISHII Kazunobu, KAIZU Yutaka
     
    Marshes are important parts of ecosystems and play an important role in maintenance of ecosystems. In this research, serials methods were established to monitor water quality of lakes and marshes based on remote sensing and GIS. In addition, the relationship between the land use and water quality has been analyzed. Firstly, a robot boat was developed to automatically and efficiently acquire water quality by grid sampling. And law-altitude unmanned helicopter remote sensing platform and water quality model were also provided. The result of the relationship between water quality changes and land use shows that the deterioration of the water quality has become serious with the deepening of the planting season.
  • 日本学術振興会：科学研究費助成事業
    Date (from‐to) : 2008 -2009 
    Author : 野口 伸, 岡本 博史
     
    本研究は人間の農作業に関わる知を構造化・一般化してロボットの知能として活用できる方法論を探求する。マルチスペクトルビジョンセンサをベースにしたステレオビジョンを構成してロボットに装備し,作業と同時に農地環境情報を収集する。バーチャルリアリティ(VR)を介して圃場内の様子を高い臨場感のもとで再生できるシステムを開発し,知識のインタープリタとして機能させる。 1)ハイパースペクトルカメラによる有用情報の抽出 ハイパースペクトルビジョンセンサによって植物の生育情報や雑草の繁茂状態など有用情報を自動抽出できる方法論を開発した。分光情報についてPLS回帰分析を行い,情報抽出に有効な光波長を同定して回帰モデルを構築した。今年度はオレンジ熟度,農薬残存量,雑草識別などについて高い精度で認識できる方法論を確立した。 2)VRによる空間情報記述法の開発 取得した画像情報をRTK-GPS,姿勢角センサ(IMU)による位置データの属性として取り扱い,世界測位系WGS84で表現される3次元画像空間が表現できるソフトウェアを開発した。また,共同研究者岡本がValparaiso University電子工学科に勤務する協力研究者Will博士を訪問して,VRの空間情報記述法について情報交換して計算負荷が小さいアルゴリズムを考案した。 3)データベースによる知の蓄積と自動整理 人間の意志決定が生育状態,土壌状態など様々なデータを融合して行われることに基づき,ロボットが周辺画像を取得・解析して有用情報に変換した後で,データベースに自動的に蓄積できるシステム開発を行った。
  • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science：Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research
    Date (from‐to) : 2004 -2006 
    Author : NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu
     
    Increases in the productivity of agriculture have resulted in a decline in the skilled machine operator work force, particularly in Japan. The average age of the agricultural workforce is increasing, indicating that this profession is not being passed on to the younger generations. Therefore, the development of automated or autonomous agricultural equipment is considered to be of commercial significance and societal importance. The objectives of the study are the operation and control of autonomous mobile robots for farming operation. One of the goals of this study is to investigate the use of mobile robots with as little as possible centralized control. The key solution to this decentralization problem is to give more autonomy to the vehicles to allow them to cope with unexpected events and obstacles, inaccurate environment model, other vehicles, and so on. This high level of autonomy is achieved using advanced sensor-based capabilities (for localization, obstacle detection and modeling) as well as planning and deliberation between the robots through local communication and coordination. In such context, multi-agent type farming robots needs some essential functions to attain the farm operation. In the research, following required subsystems which contribute to multi-agent farming robots were developed and tested. -obstacle detection and avoidance system, -real-time machine vision system of detecting crop growth, -a leading robot and a following robot based on local sensing, -task planning for multi-field robots operation.
  • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science：Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research
    Date (from‐to) : 2003 -2005 
    Author : MURASE Haruhiko, FUJIURA Tateshi, SHIBUSAWA Sakae, SHIMIZU Hiroshi, NOGUCHI Noboru, HATO Kenji
     
    2006 fiscal is the year to finalize this research project. The overall objectives of this research project were to implement the speaking plant approach in plant growth control, management and monitoring, and to collect plant biological information by means of soft-sensing techniques together with XML communication scheme. A large scale trial project was launched in order to demonstrate the behavior of the entire system built by this project. The scenario of the trial project is the following : 1) to fabricate three simulated buildings, 2) to cover appropriate roof tops and side walls with Sunagoke moss greening materials, 3) to install an irrigation system with biological information feed back control system built in a FIELD SERVER, 4) to install XML server for the control of the irrigation system, 5) to establish internet based control and monitoring system. The software development group (Murase and Shimizu) developed a general platform for SPA soft-sensing system. Four research subgroups namely, plant factory technology, plant physiology, post-harvest, and Microsystems worked together to build a sensor fusion system applying techniques specialized in each field. The web based SPA sensor system consisting of sensor elements with their own global IP on PVN architecture was developed by subgroup leaders, Oke, Hirafuji and Shimizu to assemble a customized FIELD SERVER. The trial system was designed to verify the systematic operation with a single variable describing moss physiology which is the water status of moss. It is seldom possible to measure water status of moss using direct non destructive measuring technique. This is a situation which requires an alternative soft-sensing technique. A 2D thermoviewer camera was used to measure the surface temperature of moss canopy. The acquired data were sent to the XML server. The water status of moss was analysed using a neural network estimator successfully so that the irrigation system was controlled properly to maintain required water status of moss on the building wall It must be noted that the customized field server provided not only moss canopy temperature but also environmental conditions such as humidity, air temperature, solar radiation, barometer, wind speed and direction. Those environmental conditions were referred in the neural network decision system for irrigation. The project was successfully finalized. The part of project was televised by one of major TV networks on Oct. 12, 2004.
  • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science：Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research
    Date (from‐to) : 2002 -2005 
    Author : TERAO Hideo, NOGUCHI Noboru, ISHII Kazunobu, TANI Hiroshi, OHMIYA Kazuhiko
     
    Agricultural remote sensing typically uses broadband multi-spectral images, which have a spectral range from visible to near infrared. A satellite imaging system has the distinct disadvantage of a large time delay between image acquisition and end use. Re-examination of a field using satellite imagery often requires more time than what is desired due to the repeat cycle of the satellite ; particularly when using remote sensing to assess the condition of short maturity crops such as lettuce. In addition to the temporal resolution being less than desirable, the spatial resolution of satellite images is relatively poor. Water vapor in the atmosphere often affects the apparent spectral radiance incident at the sensor ; consequently, it is often impossible to use remote sensing information in cloudy or overcast conditions. To solve these problems, we developed a remote sensing system based on an unmanned helicopters as a tool for crop status sensing. They can offer significant solutions to the drawbacks associated with other remote sensing methods. The helicopter can compensate for the lack of spatial resolution due to its capacity for low altitude flight. In addition, helicopter-base remote sensing systems could have a high timeliness value. In addition, the 3-D image mapping algorithm was also developed. As an application for the integrated remote-sensing system, a combine-harvesting system by estimating wheat maturity has been developed. Effectiveness of the system was proved by conducting a field test in "Tokachi" area.
  • 日本学術振興会：科学研究費助成事業
    Date (from‐to) : 2003 -2003 
    Author : 野口 伸, 水島 晃, 谷 宏, 石井 一暢
     
    近年,超高解像度衛星画像が実用化し,食糧生産のためのセンシングデバイスとしての期待も大きい.しかし衛星画像は,曇天,雨天時は有効でない,画像データを手元にするまで時差がある,画像分解能が低いなど生産技術に適用するには課題が多い.一方車載センサも画像取得の高度が低すぎて,画像データが膨大になる,潅水状態やぬかるみなどで車両を圃場に入れることができない場合が多い.特に,稲作で生育情報がほしい梅雨時期は,衛星ベース,地上ベースとも問題を抱えている.本研究は,日本に適したリモートセンシングのプラットフォームとして無人ヘリコプタに着目し,ヘリコプタベースのリモートセンシングシステムの開発を目指している.しかし,無人ヘリコプタの操縦は免許を必要とし,安定して飛行させることは容易でない.このような背景から,ヘリコプタベースシステムの場合,高度な制御系の開発が重要課題であるため,マサチューセッツ工科大学(MIT)航空宇宙学科との共同研究を企画した.『ヘリコプタによる農地情報の効率的な収集』と『タイムリーなリモートセンシング』の両立を目標設定した場合に,どのようなトータルシステム設計が必要で,その中の要素課題はなにか,今年度は研究調査に主眼をおいた。2003年10月にMIT航空宇宙工学科Feron助教授を招聘して,共同研究の企画会議を開いた。産業界からは産業用無人ヘリコプタを製造販売しているヤマハ発動機,ヤンマー農機に参加頂いた。次年度以降の共同研究テーマとして自動着陸機能,ローカルエリアの高精度測位技術の開発を設定することになった。併せて,農業機械学会主催の元,10月17日にセミナー「安全で安心な社会に貢献する産業用無人ヘリコプタ」を80名程度の参加者の元で科学技術振興事業団研究成果活用プラザ北海道において開催した。
  • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science：Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research
    Date (from‐to) : 2001 -2003 
    Author : NOGUCHI Noboru
     
    The goal of the research is to make the vehicle follow the leading vehicle at a given relative distance and a given angle. The 2-D laser range finder (SICK Co.ltd.) mounted on the front of the follower can provide the outline of the leading vehicle and some noises. To make the follower recognize the leading vehicle, pattern recognition method was adopted in the algorithm. two-dimensional shape of the leading vehicle as a template was made by surveying with a total-station. The basic idea of the algorithm is to measure the relative angle and range from the follower to the leading vehicle in each control step of the follower. The 2-D laser range finder can sense the range to obstacles within 80 m and over 180 deg. The developed algorithm can provide these navigation signals at update rate of 10 Hz by matching a template with an actual range data set. Then, the control algorithm for both lateral and longitudinal motions was also developed. Lateral error is controlled by steering and longitudinal motion is controlled by transmission and engine speed change. Finally, we investigated our vehicle follower control algorithm by field tests. The leading vehicle was driven by human and the following algorithm was installed to our robot tractor. The follower could track the leading vehicle under various given offset and distance. To evaluate the following accuracy, a RTK/GPS and a Fiber Optic Gyroscope were mounted on both the leading vehicle and the follower. The overall tracking error indicated about 10 cm of lateral and 3 deg of offset angle.
  • 日本学術振興会：科学研究費助成事業
    Date (from‐to) : 2002 -2002 
    Author : 野口 伸, 岡本 博史, 石井 一暢, 片岡 崇, 土肥 誠, 芋生 憲司
     
    本申請課題の日米共同研究は屋外環境下の先進農業技術の今後の方向性を『自動化』と『情報化』に求め,センサ,制御系,モデリング,通信システムなどの要素技術のオープン化を進めるとともに,インフォトロニクスの概念に基づくトータルシステムのプラットフォーム開発を目指したものである。『自動化』と『情報化』を究極に進めた生物生産システムの構築を目標設定した場合に,どのようなプラットフォームが必要で,その中の個別要素開発は今どこまで進捗しているのか,今年度は研究調査に主眼をおき実施した。個別要素技術の積み重ねにより構成されたトータルシステムは,一般に非効率・不経済になる恐れがある。そこで目標トータルシステムを設定し,そのトータルシステムを構築するうえで必要となるサブシステムを完備するといったトップダウンな研究戦略をとった。研究代表者・分担者は札幌において3回の研究会を実施し,GPSなどの周辺技術の動向を調査した。また,海外共同研究者との具体的な課題設定のために,「Automation Technology for Off-road Equipment(ATOE2002)」国際会議と併せて全メンバーによる共同研究推進会議を米国シカゴで開催し,研究テーマ設定と共同研究の立ち上げを行った。 AT0E2002会議は米国農業工学会(ASAE)主催の下,本研究課題に参画したメンバーが組織委員会を構成して,2002年7月26,27日に開催された。この会議はオフロード走行車両の自動化・情報化に関わる国際会議で,センサ,モデリング,通信システム,ユーザーインターフェース,制御系設計,マルチロボット,事例研究など基礎から応用まで幅広く取り扱った。世界中から75件の講演があり,この会議を通して具体的に共同研究課題を設定することができた。
  • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science：Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research
    Date (from‐to) : 1998 -2001 
    Author : TERAO Hideo, ISHII Kazunobu, NOGUCHI Noboru
     
    The objective of the research was to develop a machine vision, which could detect crop status. Crop status including crop health and growth was one of the most important information for promoting precision agriculture. The vision system was able to estimate both chlorophyll content and crop growth parameter composed of crop height and leaf area by calculating Leaf Color Index (LCI) and Vegetation Cover Ratio (VCR) from the image. Finally, the developed vision system was installed on an unmanned helicopter. The helicopter-base sensing system was able to effectively gather field information compared to a general ground-base system. In order to sense the crop status and efficiently conduct field operation through the timely information, the real-time vision sensor was developed. The R-G-NIR machine vision (MS2100, Duncan Tec.) was adopted to the vision sensor hardware. In this research, an estimator of the chlorophyll content and crop growth used LCI and VCR as input parameter. The VCR defined as ratio of leaf area to whole image area had significantly high correlation with crop height. In addition, the relationship between vision information and yield was also investigated. Actual Growth Index (AGI) which was product of LCI with VCR was defined to express the absolute volume of chlorophyll content. High correlation between AGI and yield, which was R^2 of 0.684, was obtained in the filed experiment. Therefore, it was concluded that the vision system could estimate yield before harvest. This study developed a system that can generate a GIS map regarding crop status obtained by the vision sensor (MS2100) mounted on an unmanned helicopter. As for the unmanned helicopter used in this research, an RTK-GPS was adopted as a positioning sensor, and an inertial sensor that provides posture (roll and pitch angles) was installed in the helicopter. When obtaining the image by the vision sensor on the helicopter, sonic distortions caused by change of helicopter's posture arise in the image. In order to remove this distortion, geometric correction by converting from image coordinate to global coordinate was badly needed. By applying geometric correction to the image, it was possible to generate a map including maximum error of 29 cm. This accuracy was high enough to utilize this helicopter-base sensing system to Precision Farming.
  • 日本学術振興会：科学研究費助成事業
    Date (from‐to) : 1996 -1998 
    Author : 野口 伸
     
    1. DGPSを用いた位置認識システムの開発 移動ロボットの開発過程で最も重大に課題は,車両の位置認識システムに他ならない.特に本研究は複数の移動ロボットを同時に制御・管理することを目的としているため,各研究機関で開発途上にある1台の移動ロボットに1台の位置認識装置を必要とする方式を採用することは得策でない.そこで本研究は,DGPSを採用した位置認識システムを開発した. 2.作業計画生成のための作業管理者との対話型インターフェースの構築 意志決定者(農家・コントラクタなど)が各ロボットの作業内容・作業経路を決定し,そのタスク内容を移動ロボットに指令できるヒューマンインターフェースを開発した.対象とする複数のほ場区画の地図がコンピュータのディスプレイ上に展開され,意志決定者との対話方式で作業方法を決めるヒューマンインターフェースで,ロボットが作業走行するに必要十分な作業仕様(内容,経路など)を決定する機能を有する.
  • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science：Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research
    Date (from‐to) : 1995 -1997 
    Author : TERAO Hideo, ZHANG Shu-huai, ISHII Kazunobu, NOGUCHI Noboru, OHMIYA Kazuhiko
     
    The purpose of the study is to develop automation system for agricultural production. We aim to build technology of an agricultural mobile robot, which is able to conduct agricultural work in the same quality with a skilled worker. The developed robot can travel alone in a field, and automatically acquire the field environmental information related to soil and crop during the travel. The results obtained in the research project are follows : 1)Design and Fabrication of Model Vehicle The model vehicle, which was satisfied with requirements for utilizing a mobile robot, was developed. The specifications and basic performance were studied. 2)Development of Navigation System Using a Geomagnetic Direction Sensor (GDS) To precisely control the robot using only orientation data obtained by the GDS,the navigation system using the GDS was developed. The refining method, which was able to compensate the geomagnetic warp surrounding the robot, was built using an Artificial Neural Network. 3)Development of Navigation System Using a Positioning System Based on Machine Vision The positioning system based on machine vision was developed to know the robot position in real time. The measurement principle is triangulation by setting the two vision sensors on the field that can automatically track the robot movement and measure the angle from the base line of the field. The navigation system using the positioning system and the GDS was build, and the robot performance was investigated by field tests. 4)Sensor Development of Corn Resistance and Crop Growth The sensor system, which could automatically measure corn resistance, was developed to evaluate soil compaction of a field by the robot. Because the sensor system attached on the mobile robot can acquire the corn resistance and the position at the same time, the spatial map of the corn resistance can be created, and the soil compaction of the field can be evaluated on a computer screen. In addition, to evaluate the crop growth variability on a field, a crop growth sensor based on machine vision was developed. The sensor can segment crop and weed areas using a Fuzzy Logic created by a Genetic Algorithm. Then, the sensor can individually predict the crop growth such as the height and the width. 5)Development of Communication System To utilize the field information such as corn resistance and crop growth for crop management, the communication system between the mobile robot and the base station was built.
  • フィールド空間の情報化
    Date (from‐to) : 1996
  • Field informatics
    Date (from‐to) : 1996
  • 日本学術振興会：科学研究費助成事業
    Date (from‐to) : 1995 -1995 
    Author : 野口 伸
     
    1.農用移動ロボットを用いて複合作業を行うための作業計画問題をGAによって解決を計った.採草作業を例に作業計画を生成た.本法はGAを階層的に適用することにより,仕事量と作業時間を目的関数として,2種類,3台のロボットの効率的な作業計画を生成することができた.GAで生成された作業計画は,ランダムに作業を行った場合と比較して,消費エネルギを56%に節約できた.一方,作業時間を目的関数に設定した時には,作業待ち時間を大幅に減少させることができるために,作業時間を51%に短縮できた. 2.重みづけTchebycheffノルム法を併用することにより,仕事量と作業時間の2目的の最適化問題に拡張し,満足できる作業計画が生成できた.加えて,実際の作業従事者によって作成された計画と比較しても,同程度の質であることが確認できた. 3.人間の作業計画立案時の意思決定メカニズムを考察するために,熟練作業者の仕事量と作業時間の重み係数行列を逆解析した.被験者全員について作業時間の重み係数は0.9を超える値を示し,人間による機械運用の計画立案時には作業時間を重視し,仕事量をほとんど考慮していないことが推察された.したがって,本法を拡張することによって,ヒューマンライクな作業計画も生成可能である. 4.今後は実機による検証実験を行うことで,その有効性を検証すると共に,系を拡張して,さらに大規模問題に適用することが必要である.
  • 日本学術振興会：科学研究費助成事業
    Date (from‐to) : 1993 -1993 
    Author : 野口 伸
     
    1.多種燃料対応型ガス機関の試作と性能モデリング (1)農産廃棄物を嫌気性発酵して生成されたバイオガスを有効利用できるガス機関を試作した.横型水冷ディーゼル機関をベース機関として,ガス燃料を吸気管内に予混合できる供給装置を試作した.また,軽油噴射量,噴射時期を制御するために,本来の燃料である軽油噴射系に改造を施し,噴射時期可変タイマーを装備した列型噴射ポンプに交換した.以上の供試機関の改造によって,種々のガス燃料の使用に対して,軽油噴射量・噴射時期を任意に制御できる機関を構成した. (2)メタンガスを燃料として利用し,機関性能モデルを作成した.性能モデルはメタン供給量,機関負荷,軽油噴射時期の3変量に対する正味熱効率,煙濃度,軽油代替率などの状態空間によって記述されている. 2.嫌気性発酵によるバイオガス生成シミュレータの開発 本研究はバイオマスの時期的・空間的な変動に伴うガス組成の変化に対する機関の適応制御法を考案することが目的であるので,嫌気性発酵より得られた生成ガスをシミュレートできる装置を試作した.バイオガスの主組成がメタンと二酸化炭素であることに着目して,2種類のガス濃度と流量を計測・制御できるように工夫した.この装置は実際の発酵槽内のガス生成時系列データを正確に再現できるものである. 3.ガス機関のCMACによる適応制御法の考案 1で得られてガス機関の性能モデルに基づいて,CMACによる適応制御法を考案した.ガス発生量と組成の変化に対して,性能モデルを修正し,噴射時期を適切に自己調整してゆく機能を有している.今後,バイオガス発生シミュレータを動作させて,適応制御アルゴリズムの有効性を実験により検証する予定である.
  • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science：Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research
    Date (from‐to) : 1990 -1991 
    Author : SHIBUSAWA Sakae
     
    Finding general aspects and descriptions of both root system and tilled clod formations is a main issue in this work. This study is a challenge to bio-physically clarifying the behavior of soil-Plant systems such as the plant growth under interactions with environment, and it has been an issue of wide interest in phytotechnology. The objectives of this work were as follows : 1)to confirm that the configurations of both corn root systems and tilled clods are a kind of fractal patterns. 2)to explain the development of soil cracks like elastic materials by the use of pattern formation under diffusive instability in viscoelastic strain field. 3)to produce a branching growth model for a root system based upon L systems. 4)to find control parameters of pattern formation on root systems and tilled clods. The results were as follows. 1)Clods of heavy clay formed by rotary tillage showed power-scaling on their contours, cracks, and crack area distribution, and they were confirmed to be fractal patterns. Moreover high-frequency blade vibration was related to crack intervals on the clods. 2)The root system of corn followed anisotropic power distribution like a self-affine fractal. 3)Non-linear coupled diffusion equations including elastic strain and plastic flow terms were proposed for giving expression to viscoelastic behavior of soil, and local accumulation of elastic strain was simulated under diffusive instability. 4)Hierarchical modeling of a corn root system provided a new type of root growth model and broke through a limit of traditional L-system methodology. 5)General aspects of both clod and root system formations such as fractal were derived, and this would provide one avenue for investigators on soil-plant system-dynamics.
  • 生物生産のロボット化
    Date (from‐to) : 1989
  • Robotics Production Agriculture
    Date (from‐to) : 1989
  • バイオマスエネルギ利用技術
    Date (from‐to) : 1979
  • Utilizartion of biomass energy
    Date (from‐to) : 1979

Educational Activities

Teaching Experience

  • Advanced Smart Agriculture
    開講年度 : 2021
    課程区分 : 修士課程
    開講学部 : 農学院
    キーワード : Society5.0, AI,ビッグデータ, IoT, ロボット,スマート農業
  • Environment and People
    開講年度 : 2021
    課程区分 : 学士課程
    開講学部 : 全学教育
    キーワード : 食のバリューチェーン、Society 5.0、エネルギー、異分野融合、持続可能性、フィールド、ロバストネス（強靱性）
  • Introduction to Physics
    開講年度 : 2021
    課程区分 : 学士課程
    開講学部 : 農学部
    キーワード : 力学，エネルギー，運動，波動，熱力学，電磁気学，光，量子力学，原子核，放射線
  • Environment and People
    開講年度 : 2021
    課程区分 : 学士課程
    開講学部 : 全学教育
    キーワード : 土壌、水、大気、自然エネルギー、地域、物質循環、Information and communication technology (ICT) と農業生産、作物生産技術、持続的食料生産、農産物の収穫後技術と品質
  • Field Informatics and automation
    開講年度 : 2021
    課程区分 : 学士課程
    開講学部 : 農学部
    キーワード : 空間情報，測位衛星システム，農作業ロボット，リモートセンシング，スマート農業
  • Automatic Control
    開講年度 : 2021
    課程区分 : 学士課程
    開講学部 : 農学部
    キーワード : 動的システム，モデリング，システム安定性，フィードバック制御

Campus Position History

  • 2019年4月1日 
    - 
    2021年3月31日 
    教育研究評議会評議員
  • 2021年4月1日 
    - 
    2023年3月31日 
    教育研究評議会評議員
  • 2017年4月1日 
    - 
    2019年3月31日 
    大学院農学院副学院長
  • 2019年4月1日 
    - 
    2021年3月31日 
    大学院農学院副学院長
  • 2021年4月1日 
    - 
    2023年3月31日 
    大学院農学院副学院長
  • 2017年4月1日 
    - 
    2019年3月31日 
    大学院農学研究院副研究院長
  • 2019年4月1日 
    - 
    2021年3月31日 
    大学院農学研究院副研究院長
  • 2021年4月1日 
    - 
    2023年3月31日 
    大学院農学研究院副研究院長
  • 2017年4月1日 
    - 
    2019年3月31日 
    農学部副学部長
  • 2019年4月1日 
    - 
    2021年3月31日 
    農学部副学部長
  • 2021年4月1日 
    - 
    2023年3月31日 
    農学部副学部長
  • 2023年4月1日 
    - 
    2025年3月31日 
    農学部長
  • 2023年4月1日 
    - 
    2025年3月31日 
    大学院農学研究院長
  • 2023年4月1日 
    - 
    2025年3月31日 
    大学院農学院長

Position History

  • 2019年4月1日 
    - 
    2021年3月31日 
    教育研究評議会評議員
  • 2021年4月1日 
    - 
    2023年3月31日 
    教育研究評議会評議員
  • 2017年4月1日 
    - 
    2019年3月31日 
    大学院農学院副学院長
  • 2019年4月1日 
    - 
    2021年3月31日 
    大学院農学院副学院長
  • 2021年4月1日 
    - 
    2023年3月31日 
    大学院農学院副学院長
  • 2017年4月1日 
    - 
    2019年3月31日 
    大学院農学研究院副研究院長
  • 2019年4月1日 
    - 
    2021年3月31日 
    大学院農学研究院副研究院長
  • 2021年4月1日 
    - 
    2023年3月31日 
    大学院農学研究院副研究院長
  • 2017年4月1日 
    - 
    2019年3月31日 
    農学部副学部長
  • 2019年4月1日 
    - 
    2021年3月31日 
    農学部副学部長
  • 2021年4月1日 
    - 
    2023年3月31日 
    農学部副学部長
  • 2023年4月1日 
    - 
    2025年3月31日 
    農学部長
  • 2023年4月1日 
    - 
    2025年3月31日 
    大学院農学研究院長
  • 2023年4月1日 
    - 
    2025年3月31日 
    大学院農学院長

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