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Development Of A Test Rig For Evaluating A Yield Monitoring System For Citrus Mechanical Harvesters

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Computers in Agriculture and Natural Resources, 4th World Congress Conference, Proceedings of the 24-26 July 2006 (Orlando, Florida USA) Publication Date 24 July 2006  701P0606.(doi:10.13031/2013.21852)
Authors:   Ganesh C. Bora, Reza Ehsani, Kyeonghwan Lee, Wonsuk Lee
Keywords:   Yield monitors, Citrus, Mechanical harvesters, Test rig, Load cell, Image processing

Canopy shake and catch mechanical harvesting systems are increasingly being used to harvest citrus fruits targeted for juice processing plants in Florida. Currently, there is no yield monitoring system commercially available for citrus mechanical harvesters and there is a need among the growers for a yield monitoring system for citrus mechanical harvesting machines. Evaluating different mass flow sensing systems requires a test bench that allows a series of repeatable tests under a control environment. Conducting such tests on a real mechanical harvester requires extensive machine downtime which would be very expensive. This paper discusses the development of the test rig, instrumentation, and data acquisition system used in the study as well as the results of the evaluation of a direct mass flow sensing technique and a computer vision based yield monitoring system.

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