Autonomous Mechanical Thinning Using Scanning LIDAR
Conference Paper, Proceedings of American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Annual Meeting, July, 2011
Abstract
Hand thinning is a labor-intensive and expensive peach production practice. Mechanical thinning has been shown to be an economical method of reducing thinning cost. However, current mechanical thinning systems applied to perpendicular V systems require the operator to constantly steer the tractor to maintain engagement. This paper presents a system using a LIDAR to sense the canopy and automatically control the position of a modified Darwin string thinner position to maintain engagement. We demonstrate that the automated system is approximately as good as a human at maintaining canopy engagement by presenting blossom removal counts, and suggest that this may be an economically viable method of augmenting mechanical thinning.
BibTeX
@conference{Aasted-2011-7321,author = {Matthew Aasted and Reuben J. Dise and Tara Auxt Baugher and James R. Schupp and Paul H. Heinemann and Sanjiv Singh},
title = {Autonomous Mechanical Thinning Using Scanning LIDAR},
booktitle = {Proceedings of American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Annual Meeting},
year = {2011},
month = {July},
keywords = {Automation, Mechanical Thinning, LIDAR.},
}
Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.