Control System for the Mountainous Orchard Electric-Drive Monorail Transporter

Abstract

In order to reduce operation risk and working intensity in mountainous orchard transportation and to realize optimized control for the mountainous orchard electric-drive monorail transportation system, a mountainous orchard electric-drive monorail transporter control system was designed and developed in this study. The system mainly consists of modules as: manual and remote control, positioning, obstacle avoidance, speed measurement, motor control, electric-magnetic break, and the position limit. The driving speed, current consumption, break control, and battery pack running ability experiments were conducted to test the control system. Results indicated that, the transporter’s driving speed is 0.60~0.58 m/s when it is running on the ground with the load weight from 0 to 100kg. This speed is little affected by the load weight. The transporter’s driving speed is 0.45~0.28 m/s when it is climbing a steep hill with an angle of 39°. That speed is critically affected by the load weight. In further improvements, a shift mechanism will be introduced so that adjustable gear ratio could be achieved thus solve the current overload problem in a full load situation.