Seeds of soybean internal mechanical damage is still neglected in China due to its invisibility. Using stereo microscopy system, the characteristics and germination test of three varieties of soybean seeds with internal mechanical damage which threshed with 5TD-280 thresher were studied in order to test its harmfulness to its germination and precision seeding. And then the feasibility of the non-destructive detection with near infrared hyper-spectroscope was discussed. The results show that seeds of soybean threshed with machine internal mechanical damage rate is 8.1%–11.8% (average of 9.4%) and more than 90 percent of the soybean seeds with internal mechanical damage will not germinate, or even if germinating will grow weakly. The poor germination quality existed serious potential hazard to precision agricultural development.

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Sea buckthorn is a multipurpose, hardy, and deciduous shrub, and an ideal plant for soil erosion control, land reclamation, and farmstead protection. Its fruit has high nutritional and medicinal values for humans. However, harvesting of the fruit is very difficult since they are very tightly bunched along the branches. Moreover, the trees have large and needle-sharp thorns hiding all along branches. Therefore, it is very important to study mechanized harvesting technologies to promote the development of sea buckthorn industry. This article mainly presented a comprehensive review of the research status on sea buckthorn fruit harvester, introduced structures and working principles of several typical harvesters, pointed out some problems of harvesting the fruit and recommendations or corresponding suggestions for future research.

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We performed a Customer Satisfaction (CS) Portfolio analysis targeted at farmers who had bought a Welsh onion harvester. Subsequently we also performed a conjoint analysis to assess farmers’ preferences for simulated concepts of an improved harvester based on their likes and dislikes. Our results showed that farmers had high expectations of but low satisfaction with some attributes (e.g., price), while they had low expectations but high satisfaction with other attributes (e.g., earth separation performance). It also showed that the responding farmers with a greater area under cultivation were more interested in the size of the harvester and its working efficiency than in price. These results suggest ideas for machine development and improvement and their order of priority.

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The objective of this research was to develop a wireless system enabling communication between a Central Control Unit and four robots that worked in a model greenhouse. The wireless system could be applied to control multiple robots in fruit picking, pesticide spraying, and resource transportation. Two of the robots were designated as “work-robots”, traveling in work ways between plants. The other two “assist-robots”, moving in two passage ways, had the task of carrying the work-robots to designated work ways. The results showed that the success rate of system operations under varying conditions was consistently above 95%. The developed wireless control system has shown potential for application in real life greenhouse operations and as an educational tool.

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Peel hardening, due to loss of moisture during low temperature storage, is a prevalent problem in mangosteen. This research develops a model for predicting peel hardening in mangosteen, using a correlation with moisture content as determined by NIR spectroscopy. Mangosteen fruit were stored and their NIR reflectance, moisture content, and peel hardness were measured over time. Additional fruit was also stored for monitoring, and their NIR reflectance measured. Peel hardness of mangosteen in storage initially decreased, and then increased from the middle to the end of the storage period. Changes in peel hardness, based on moisture content over the 28 days of storage at 13 °C can be predicted, as well as for the 16 days storage at room temperature.

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The objective of this study was to optimize the control parameters of a robot combine harvester so that it can run along a straight line with minimal oscillation and minimal lateral error. A kinematic model was established by analyzing the relations among steering, control lever angle and performance of the vehicle. Based on the kinematic model, optimizations of a steering controller were conducted so as to obtain optimized control parameters. The optimized control parameters were verified by field experiments. In a stable state, the RMS value of lateral error was 0.025 m with a maximum of 0.066 m. Thus, the effectiveness of the method for optimization of control parameters of the robot combine harvester was verified.

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This study proposes a vision-based uncut crop edge detection method to be utilized as a part of an automated guidance system for a head-feeding combine harvester, which is widely used in Japan for the harvesting of rice and wheat. The proposed method removes the perspective effects of the acquired images by inverse perspective mapping and recovers the crop rows to their actual parallel states. Then, the uncut crop edges are detected by applying color transformation and the edge detection method. The proposed method has shown outstanding detection performance on the images acquired under various conditions of the paddy field with an average accuracy of 97% and a processing speed of 33 ms per frame.

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A small model vehicle was developed for experiments using microwave-driven agricultural vehicles. The vehicle has a turntable with a rectenna panel, which is controlled and directed to the transmitting antenna. The vehicle position and attitude information from an image-processing PC are used to control the transmitting turntable and are also transferred to the vehicle through RS-232C communication wire. The microcomputer on the vehicle controls the rotation of the rectenna panel using this information. Results show the necessity of a rapid detection cycle for position and attitude to maintain steady transmission and reception of microwave power.

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