Advanced sensor platform for human detection and protection in autonomous farming
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The concept of autonomous farming concerns automatic agricultural machines operating safely and efficiently without human intervention. In order to ensure safe autonomous operation, real-time risk detection and avoidance must be performed. This paper presents a flexible vehicle-mounted sensor platform for recording positional and imaging data with a total of seven sensors. Different imaging modalities are chosen for robust detection performance in a variety of weather and lighting conditions. Different algorithms applied to recordings from a grass-harvesting case study show that it is possible to detect humans, whereas small animals located in front of the vehicle represent a much greater challenge.