Method and Experiment for Quantifying Local Features of Hard Bottom Contours When Driving Intelligent Farm Machinery in Paddy Fields

Abstract

The hard bottom layer of a paddy field has a great influence on the driving stability and the operation quality and efficiency of intelligent farm machinery. For paddy field machinery, continuous improvements in the accuracy and operation efficiency of unmanned precision operations are needed to realize unmanned rice farming. In the context of unmanned farm machinery operation, the complicated hard bottom layer situation makes it difficult to quantify the local characteristics of paddy fields. In this paper, an unmanned direct rice seeding machine chassis is used to maneuver the operation field and collect the hard bottom layer information simultaneously. This information is used to design a data processing method that automatically calibrates the sensor installation error and performs abnormal value rejection and 3D sample curve denoising of the contour trajectory. A hard bottom layer surface profile evaluation method based on the local sliding surface roughness is also proposed. The local characteristics of the hard bottom layer were quantified, and the results from the test plots showed that the mean value of the local roughness was 0.0065, where 68.27% of the plots were distributed in the variation range of 0.0042~0.0087 and 99.73% were distributed in the variation range of 0~0.0133. Using the test field data, the surface roughness features were verified to describe the variability in representative working conditions, such as the transport, downfield, operation, and trapping of unmanned intelligent farm machinery. When driving intelligent farm machinery, the proposed method for quantifying local features of the hard bottom layer can provide feedback on the local environmental features at any given position of the machinery. The method also provides a reference for the design optimization of unmanned systems, which can help to realize speed adaption and improve the local path tracking control accuracy of smart farming machines.