Development of Follower-Type Vegetable Carrier

Abstract

We developed a prototype of a carrier that can follow a vegetable harvester to achieve labor-saving of vegetable harvest works. This carrier incorporated a following system in order to smoothly follow vegetable harvesters. The following system automatically controled starting, acceleration-deceleration, and steering. It could follow a welsh-onion harvester at 0.02 to 0.04m/s while providing a work efficiency of 0.4 to 0.6a/person·h. Compared to a normal carrier without a following system, this carrier could decrease the number of times workers move in the field by about 30% and the distance they move in the field by about 70%.