Rolling resistance and sinkage analysis by comparing FEM and experimental data for a grape transporting vehicle

A New Reconfigurable Agricultural Vehicle Controlled by a User Graphical Interface: Mechanical and Electronic Aspects

“…We have conducted field experiments in a vineyard and FEM analyses of a single wheel as the size changes [22] and of a track [18] to evaluate the effect of different contact areas in terms of sinkage, rolling resistance, and pressure exerted onto the soil. Unlike the wheel, a track is a much more complex system to analyze and simulate because of the flexible chain and peak of pressures caused by the rollers, as we further discussed in [23].…”

“…Unlike the wheel, a track is a much more complex system to analyze and simulate because of the flexible chain and peak of pressures caused by the rollers, as we further discussed in [23]. We tested the rolling resistance and sinkage of our designed track module in a soil bin facility built at the Kyushu Institute of Technology [18]. We have mixed clay, silt, and sand in the percentages of 20%, 40%, and 40%, respectively, to obtain loam soil [24] with the frictional and cohesive properties typical of agricultural soil.…”

“…The sprocket has a larger diameter than the idler to facilitate the wheel mode configuration when the idler is lifted. A more detailed description of the track module design can be found in [18,23].…”

“…To combine the benefits of wheels and tracks and adjust the contact area based on the soil conditions, we proposed a locomotion system to change the contact patch [18], and we realized "Hadrian" a new wheel/track reconfigurable vehicle. The vehicle is equipped with a locomotion system that can switch between a wheeled and a half-tracked mode by partially lifting the tracks' idlers and leaving only the sprockets in contact with the soil to have a wheel shape interacting with the ground.…”

Off-Road Electric Vehicles and Autonomous Robots in Agricultural Sector: Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities

“…Agricultural vehicle and robotic research ranges from automated harvesting with professional manipulators and innovative grippers integrated into a custom-designed mobile platform to autonomous target spraying for pest control [41]. Most of the recent literature published in this research area includes visual-based control, advanced image processing techniques, gripper designs for automatic harvesting of valuable crops, terrain assessment using vehicle modeling [28,42], and navigation for field robot development. Moreover, agricultural robots' impacts, ethics, and policy points of view are studied in [26], where the social, environmental, and economic benefits of robots in agriculture are highlighted.…”