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: Path planning is an essential part for traveling and mowing of autonomous lawn mower tractors. Objectives of the paper were to analyze operation patterns by a skilled farmer, to extract and optimize waypoints, and to demonstrate generation of formatted planned path for autonomous lawn mower tractors. A 27-HP mower tractor was operated by a skilled farmer on grass fields. To measure tractor travel and operation characteristics, an RTK-GPS antenna with a 6-cm RMS error, an inertia motion sensing unit, a gyro compass, a wheel angle sensor, and a mower on/off sensor were mounted on the mower tractor, and all the data were collected at a 10-Hz rate. All the sensor data were transferred through a software program to show the status immediately on the notebook. Planned path was generated using the program parameter settings, mileage and time calculations, and the travel path was plotted using developed software. Based on the human operation patterns, path planning algorithm was suggested for autonomous mower tractor. Finally path generation was demonstrated in a formatted file and graphic display. After optimizing the path planning, a decrease in distance about 13% and saving of the working time about 30% was achieved. Field test data showed some overlap, especially in the turning areas. Results of the study would be useful to implement an autonomous mower tractor, but further research needs to improve the performance.

: Objective of the study was to compare reflectance spectrum in the blade and the vein parts of cabbage and kale leaves. A total 6 cabbage and kale leaves were taken from a plant factory in Chungnam National University, Korea. Spectra data were collected with a UV/VIS/NIR spectrometer (model: USB2000, Ocean Optics, FL, USA) in the wavelength region of 190 -1130 nm. Median filter smoothing method was selected to preprocess the obtained spectra data. We computed reflectance difference by subtraction of averaged spectrum from individual spectrum. To estimate correlation at different parts of cabbage and kale leaves, cross -correlation method was used. Differences between cabbage and kale leaves are clearly manifested in the green, red and near -infrared ranges. The percent reflectance of cabbage leaves in the NIR wavelength band was higher than that of kale leaves. Reflectance in the blade part was higher than in the vein part by 18%. Reflectance difference in the different parts of cabbage and kale leaves were clear in all of the wavelength bands. Standard deviation of reflectance difference in the vein part was greater for kale, while the value in the blade part was greater for cabbage leaves. Standard deviation of cross -correlation increased from 0.092 in the first sensor (UV/VIS) and 0.007 in the second sensor (NIR) to 0.099 and 0.015, respectively.

This study was performed to design and to construct a digital soil cone index(CI) measuring device replacing conventional analog type devices. The device developed in the study consisted of a load cell, a rotary encoder and a motor with a decelerator as its main parts. The cone speed was controlled lower than 3.0 m/s which keeps the standard suggested by the ASABE S313.3 specification. The experiment was conducted in a soil bin system as well as in various fields. The CI data measured by the developed device were compared with those by an existing measurement device(SC900, Spectrum, USA). Based on the experiments at various field conditions, the CI measuring characteristic of the device was quite similar to that of the conventional device within a acceptable R 2 range of more than 0.5(mean=0.76). It was concluded that the digital cone index measuring device was an effective and comprehensive sensor for measuring soil strength.

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