Development of an Automatic Weeding Thinner for Direct Sowing of Sugar Beets (Part 4)

Performance of a Prototype Automatic Weeding Thinner

Abstract

The operating accuracy of weeding thinner blades on the developed automatic weeding thinner was evaluated using dummy sugar beets. A field test of the thinning and the weeding was also conducted using the developed system. The maximum error of the controlled timing of the opening and closing of the blades was estimated at 43mm. Furthermore, the developed thinning and weeding algorithm showed a sufficient performance. The results of the field test of the thinning and the weeding showed the loss of sugar beets to be 11.8% and the weeding rate to be 94.8%. It was concluded that the developed weeding thinner can indeed be used successfully for automatic thinning and weeding work.