Design and Experiment of Real-Time Grain Yield Monitoring System for Corn Kernel Harvester

Abstract

Real-time crop harvest data acquisition from harvesters during harvesting operations is an important way to understand the distribution of crop harvest in the field. Most real-time monitoring systems for grain yield using sensors are vulnerable to factors such as low accuracy and low real-time performance. To address this phenomenon, a real-time grain yield monitoring system was designed in this study. The real-time monitoring of yield was accomplished by adding three pairs of photoelectric sensors to the elevator of the corn kernel harvester. The system mainly consists of a signal acquisition and processing module, a positioning module and a visualization terminal; the signal acquisition frequency was set to 1 kHz and the response time was 2 ms. When the system operated, the signal acquisition and processing module detected the sensor signal duration of grain blocking the scrapers of the grain elevator in real-time and used the low-potential signal-based corn grain yield calculation model constructed in this study to complete the real-time yield measurement. The results of the bench tests, conducted under several different operating conditions with the simulated elevator test bench built, showed that the error of the system measurement was less than 5%. Field tests were conducted on a Zoomlion 4YZL-5BZH combined corn kernel harvester and the results showed that the average error of measured yield was 3.72%. Compared to the yield measurement method using the weighing method, the average error of the bench test yield measurement was 7.6% and the average error of yield measurement in field trials with a mass flow sensor yield measurement system was 16.38%. It was verified that the system designed in this study has high yield measurement accuracy and real-time yield measurement, and can provide reference for precision agriculture and high yield management.

Design and Performance Analysis of a Sunflower Cutting Table Based on the Principle of Manual Disk Pick-Up

“…Considering the specific problems of harvesting without row alignment [19,20], where the forcible alignment of the harvest divider results in sunflower plants tilting sideways or inverted plants in the opposite row, the parameters of the divider are designed to ensure that the sunflower stalks can enter the divider smoothly and that the inverted plants can be righted and enter the dividing gap. This is the state in which the sunflower plant is in the limiting position, directly in front of the apex of the inner divider (Figure 4).…”

Design and Experiment of a Harvesting Header for Wide–Narrow-Row Corn

“…Corn is a multi-purpose crop that can be used for food, feed, processing, and energy [1][2][3][4][5]. The proportion of the sown area and yield of corn among China's grain crops increased from 17.1% and 19.5% (1980) to 36.4% and 40.3% (2022) [6].…”

Effect of Snapping Roller Parameters on Maize Harvesting

“…Recently, maize acreage has surpassed that of wheat and rice, making it the leading crop in China. Maize is a versatile crop that has several uses in food production, animal feed, industrial processing, and energy generation [1][2][3]. In China, the percentage of land used for growing maize and the amount of maize produced compared to other grain crops has risen from 17.1% and 19.5% in 1980 to 36.4% and 40.3% in 2022 [4].…”