Guidance Line Extraction Algorithm using Central Region Data of Crop for Vision Camera based Autonomous Robot in Paddy Field

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm of the guidance line extraction for autonomous agricultural robot based on vision camera in paddy field. It is the important process for guidance line extraction which finds the central point or area of rice row. We are trying to use the central region data of crop that the direction of rice leaves have convergence to central area of rice row in order to improve accuracy of the guidance line. The guidance line is extracted from the intersection points of extended virtual lines using the modified robust regression. The extended virtual lines are represented as the extended line from each segmented straight line created on the edges of the rice plants in the image using the Hough transform. We also have verified an accuracy of the proposed algorithm by experiments in the real wet paddy.