Agricultural Machinery Auxiliary Navigation Realization Basic Principle

In the development wave of precision agriculture, agricultural machinery auxiliary navigation technology has become the core force for improving labor productivity, reducing the intensity of operations, and enhancing operation safety. It integrates a variety of advanced technologies inside to ensure that agricultural machinery can travel automatically along the predetermined route. Among them, the auto steering motor, as the actuating component, plays an important role. The following is the basic principle of realizing agricultural machinery auxiliary navigation:

1. Differential GNSS technology

In the process of autonomous driving of agricultural machinery, precise operations such as sowing and fertilizing require the acquisition of positioning data at the decimeter level or even the centimeter level. GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) can provide absolute position and heading information throughout the day and all weather conditions. However, the loss of GNSS signals caused by extreme weather or occlusion limits its application in complex farmland environments. Therefore, differential GNSS technology is generally adopted to send the pseudo-range correction values or phase information measured by the reference station with known positions to the auxiliary mobile station, thereby improving the positioning accuracy.

2. Inertial Navigation System

An Inertial Navigation System (INS) refers to an autonomous navigation system that uses gyroscopes and accelerometers as sensitive components. It does not rely on external information and does not radiate energy to the outside. It acquires position and attitude through track inference and can adapt to working environments in the air, on the ground and underwater. At present, various methods such as flexible inertial navigation, fiber optic inertial navigation, laser inertial navigation, and micro-solid-state inertial instruments have been developed.

The characteristics of inertial navigation system

1. Good concealment, not affected by external electromagnetic interference.

2. It can work all-weather and all-time in the air, on the Earth's surface and even underwater.

3. The data update rate is high, with good short-term accuracy and stability.

4. It can provide position, speed, heading and attitude Angle data, and the navigation information it generates has good continuity and low noise.

The basic working principle of inertial navigation

Based on Newton's laws of mechanics, by measuring the acceleration of the carrier in an inertial reference frame, integrating it with respect to time, and transforming it into the navigation coordinate system, information such as velocity, yaw Angle and position in the navigation coordinate system can be obtained. Inertial navigation systems are a type of computational navigation method. That is, from the position of a known point, the position of the next point of the carrier is calculated based on the continuously measured heading Angle and speed of the carrier. Therefore, the current position of a moving object can be continuously measured. The accelerometer in an inertial navigation system is used to measure the acceleration of moving objects. The gyroscope is used to form a navigation coordinate system, stabilizing the measurement axis of the accelerometer in this coordinate system and providing the heading and attitude angles.

Jinan Keya focuses on the research and development of agriculture auto steer systems, whose core components include controller, tablet, auto steering motor, sensor and GNSS satellite antenna, etc. The system deeply integrates inertial navigation, automatic control and electric steering technologies, and operates with a single antenna, eliminating the complexity associated with the installation and calibration of dual antennas, making agricultural production more efficient.

We will attend the AGRITECHNICA in Hannover, Germany from Nov. 9 to Nov. 15, 2025 at booth No.: 17F22b, welcome visit our booth.