Design of an Integrated Controller for a Sweeping Mechanism of a Low-Dust Almond Pickup Machine

California is the world's biggest producer and exporter of almonds. Currently, the sweeping of almonds during the harvest creates a significant amount of dust, causing air pollution in the neighboring urban areas. A low-dust sweeping system was designed to reduce the dust during the sweeping of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 23; no. 4; p. 2046
Main Authors Serajian, Reza, Sun, Jian-Qiao, Ehsani, Reza
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland MDPI AG 11.02.2023
MDPI
Subjects
Air pollution
Air quality
Angular velocity
Brushes
Control systems
Control systems design
Controllers
Design
Dust
Feedback control
height controller
Kinematic equations
Kinematics
Nut industry
Nuts
optimize
stabilize
Sweeping
Synchronism
synchronize
Trajectory control
Urban areas
California
harvester
height controller
optimize
angular velocity
feedback control
stabilize
dust generation
synchronize
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Summary:California is the world's biggest producer and exporter of almonds. Currently, the sweeping of almonds during the harvest creates a significant amount of dust, causing air pollution in the neighboring urban areas. A low-dust sweeping system was designed to reduce the dust during the sweeping of almonds in the orchard. The system includes a feedback control system to control the sweeper brushes' height and their angular velocity by adjusting the forward velocity of the harvester and the brushes' rotational speeds to avoid any extra overlapping sweeping, which increases dust generation. The governing kinematic equations for sweepers' angular velocity and vehicle forward speed were derived. The feedback controllers for synchronizing these speeds were designed to optimize brush/dust contact to minimize dust generation. The sweepers' height controller was also designed to stabilize the gap between the brushes and the orchard floor and track the road trajectory. Controllers were simulated and tuned for a fast response for agricultural applications with less than a second response delay. Results showed that the designed system has acceptable performance and generates low amounts of dust within the acceptable range of California ambient air quality standards.
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ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s23042046