Design and field test of an automatic data acquisition system in a self-propelled forage harvester

In this study an online information and documentation system for the performance data of a forage harvester was developed and tested. A data acquisition system with positioning sensing and a communication module were integrated into the harvester. The data were transferred from the mobile equipment to the co-operative's control centre in two ways: short message service (SMS) and manually. The following online information was recorded: performance data (operation speed, location, harvested yield, …), machine settings (knife drum speed, …) and machine warnings (oil levels, oil pressure, oil temperature, …). Harvester position on the maps was displayed on a monitor installed in the cab. Harvested area was calculated from the field patterns registered by global positioning system (GPS). It was necessary to adapt the existing cartography to the reality of the co-operative's land. In the first design of the mounted prototype the operator's ease of use and the reliability of the system were analyzed. At this stage operation and ergonomic improvements were made. An evaluation was done by comparing the costs of processing the current information with the costs following the implementation of the new system. In a second investigation a first analysis was done of the recorded time to harvest each field and then regression lines were plotted to compare the field capacity value collected by the system with the field size and the crop yield. Correlations between the field capacity of the forage harvester, the area of the plot and the crop yield were found in these first tests.