Monitoring the Flow of Seeds in Grain Drill using Fiber Sensor

A new method to estimate the mass flow of seeds in tractor-propelled grain drills was introduced and evaluated in this paper. This can ease the tasks of the operator who is required to investigate the availability of seeds in the hopper of the grain drill throughout the operation. Moreover, it would help the farmer to understand the distribution of seeds in the field which can result in applying precision monitoring on the field during the growing season. The grain drill sows seeds using multiple fluted rollers simultaneously. Therefore, the performance of all rollers was first evaluated by running the grain drill a distance of 160 meters for 22 times and measuring the mass of seeds from each fluted roller each time. Next, fiber sensors were placed underneath 2 fluted rollers and the output data induced by interrupting of the flowing seeds were collected. Results indicated that a linear relationship between the sensors output and the mass flow of seeds was found. Among 41 samples, the difference between the actual and estimated mass of seeds was less than 5% in 27 samples and none of the other samples had error which exceeded 15%. Noise due to vibration or seeds geometry has affected the results. However, interestingly, the total actual mass of seeds of the two fluted rollers after all trials was 10.340 kg which was identical to the estimated mass using the sensors. This suggests that noise might have followed a specific pattern and that it could be eliminated after further investigation. Beside, further experiments are required to assess and confirm the currents results.