Implementation of a Fuzzy Logic Control Strategy on a Harvester’s Controller Based on MATLAB Environment

Abstract

Due to the nonlinear process of grain harvesting, there is no precise mathematical model to describe the behavior of the cleaning system of a harvester. Both the classical control and modern control methods cannot fulfil the requirements. Owing to this, the intelligent control algorithm was proposed, and the fuzzy logic control (FLC) method is a type of this. At present, most FLC algorithms are proposed in a MATLAB environment. However, the control problems in reality are controlled by microcomputer controllers with different chips. The control language of the microcomputer controller is usually written in C language. It is impossible to directly migrate the algorithm between these two different languages. Therefore, it is an important issue to transplant the FLC algorithm procedure written by MATLAB to the microcomputer controller. To realize the above target, we have built a complete set of control systems for our harvester’s cleaning system based on an upper computer and an STM32 core-chip controller. By means of combining FLC theory and expert knowledge, we adopted an improved FLC algorithm for the cleaning system, which is mounted in our self-designed combine harvester. Through this scheme, we have realized the objective of migrating the FLC algorithm from a MATLAB environment to the controller. The results of the experiment show that our method is reliable.