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Autonomous Tractor Navigation — John Deere

STM32Embedded C/C++PIDCANIMUReal-Time Systems
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Overview

Led a team building a scale autonomous tractor for a John Deere navigation challenge. The system estimated vehicle position from camera, encoder, and IMU feedback, received target coordinates wirelessly, and used closed-loop control to drive autonomously toward each target.

Embedded Platform

The tractor was built around an STM32H755 dual-core microcontroller with supporting sensors, motor/steering control, and wireless communication.

The platform integrated:

  • DC traction motor with encoder feedback.
  • Steering servo.
  • IMU feedback.
  • Wireless target-coordinate reception.
  • CAN, SPI, I2C, and UART communication.
  • PWM motor and steering control.

My Contribution — Navigation

The embedded software used non-blocking state-machine logic to coordinate navigation, waypoint updates, motor commands, steering, and communication.

My work included team leadership, hardware integration, peripheral configuration, embedded communication, PWM/SPI implementation, and full-system integration.

Result

The final prototype autonomously estimated its state and drove toward externally provided target coordinates on the physical scale tractor.