# Co-modelling of Agricultural Robotic Systems

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a co-modelling and co-simulation methodology for developing automated and robotic ground-vehicles in agriculture, integrating multiple engineering disciplines for virtual testing and development support.

## Contribution

It presents a novel model-based development methodology using co-models and co-simulation for agricultural robotic systems, enabling integrated virtual prototyping and scenario evaluation.

## Key findings

- Developed co-models for agricultural robotic ground-vehicles.
- Validated co-simulation approach for component and system testing.
- Supported transition from virtual models to real-world implementations.

## Abstract

Automated and robotic ground-vehicle solutions are gradually becoming part of the agricultural industry, where they are used for performing tasks such as feeding, herding, planting, harvesting, and weed spraying. Agricultural machinery operates in both indoor and outdoor farm environments, resulting in changing operational conditions. Variation in the load transported by ground-vehicles is a common occurrence in the agricultural domain, in tasks such as animal feeding and field spraying. The development of automated and robotic ground-vehicle solutions for conditions and scenarios in the agricultural domain is a complex task, which requires input from multiple engineering disciplines. This PhD thesis proposes modelling and simulation for the research and development of automated and robotic ground-vehicle solutions for purposes such as component development, virtual prototype testing, and scenario evaluation. The collaboration of multiple engineering disciplines is achieved by combining multiple modelling and simulation tools from different engineering disciplines. These combined models are known as co-models and their execution is referred to as co-simulation. The results of this thesis are a model-based development methodology for automated and robotic ground-vehicles utilised for a number of research and development cases. The co-models of the automated and robotic ground vehicles were created using the model-based development methodology, and they contribute to the future development support in this research domain. The thesis presents four contributions toward the exploration of a chosen design space for an automated or robotic ground vehicle. Solutions obtained using co-modelling and co-simulation are deployed to their ground-vehicle realisations, which ensures that all stages of development are covered.