Urbana, Illinois
November 1, 2007
Automated harvesting is considered
science fantasy by some farmers, but students at the
University of Illinois have
developed a small-scale harvesting model that could help bring
fantasy one step closer to reality.
Students in the Off-Road Equipment Management class in the
department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) have
developed an autonomous harvester-to-bin system that uses
wireless communication to synchronize the action between a
harvester and an unloader. The team recently took their project
to the robotics demonstration at the American Society of
Agricultural and Biological Engineers Annual International
Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“The challenge was to design an automated harvesting operation
that used one harvester and one or more unloading carts,” said
Tony Grift, a professor in ABE who teaches the equipment
management class. “An autonomously guided harvester sends
wireless messages to an unloader to indicate that its bin is
full. The task of the unloader is then to engage the harvester
and return to a location where it dumps its loads into a pit.
Then the process starts again and the goal is to move as much
simulated grain as possible from the harvester to the pit in a
five-minute time period.”
The size of the bin had to be one liter, and green BBs were used
to simulate grain. Students were allowed to fill the bin
manually after each cycle.
The U of I team used the LEGO MindStorms™ building system to
design three vehicles—one harvester and two trucks. ROBOLAB™, a
programming environment similar to one used by professional
engineers, was used to program each vehicle to perform its
specific task as efficiently as possible.
Because the objective was to design a system that was completely
autonomous, students were not allowed to touch the vehicles
during the demonstration.
“It’s preferable that you don’t spill anything either,” said
Grift, “even though part of the fun is watching when things go
wrong.”
Other teams that participated in the event included Kansas
State, Oklahoma, Iowa and McGill University in Canada. Grift,
who is chairman of the committee that organizes the event, hopes
to have more international participation next year.
“We have commitments from two teams in Japan, we hope to have a
team from Korea,” he said, “and I believe the Canadians will be
back. They were very enthusiastic this year.”
Although the challenge for next year’s event has not yet been
decided, Grift is committed to finding projects that can be
applied to real-world problems. Autonomous sheep shearing (using
a stuffed animal for the demonstration), tree-trimming and weed
control are just a few of the ideas being considered.
“Some of these types of events can be very contrived, such as
getting basketballs from a bench through a hoop,” he said. “It’s
cool, but what does it have to do with anything?
“It’s great when students build something that can eventually be
used for research,” Grift concluded. “We want to do something
that is very close to the real problems we’re trying to solve
here.” |
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