Assessment of the information potential of on-board control systems of agricultural machinery

Every year more and more agricultural machinery are equipped with on-board systems for monitoring the technical condition and managing work processes. This makes the issue of assessing the potential of their information content and developing solutions that allow obtaining more information to predict changes in the technical condition and improve the organization of the maintenance and repair process increasingly relevant. The purpose of the study is to develop a methodology for assessing the information potential of on-board control systems, allowing to determine the degree of control of machine elements by electronic systems based on the amount of diagnostic information. When studying the capabilities of on-board control systems (OCS) and the potential for their use as a source of information on the state of machine elements, methods of information theory and methods of automatic control theory were used. Modern research shows that the information on the state of an object is more accurate the longer and the greater the number of parameters the object is studied. The maximum possible level of information will always be lower than the maximum achievable level of information by the value of Δ, which will be due to the limitations of the methods and means of obtaining information. Taking this into account, the methodology for assessing the informative potential of the OCS involves the use of the values of the amount of information and the efficiency coefficient of the OCS. Testing of the methodology showed that out of 27 types of failures, using the OCS, it is possible to identify 14 failures for Akros-550 combines, 15 failures for Akros-585 combines, and 16 failures for Akros-595 PLUS combines. Taking into account the probability of occurrence of the identified failures, the informativeness of the OCS (IOCS) was calculated and the efficiency coefficient (Cef) was calculated. The amount of information from the OCS and the weight of the identified failures for the Akros-595PLUS turned out to be higher than for other models due to the fact that this model and its configuration had additionally installed sensors. Data on the informative potential of the OCS, with information on the cost of eliminating certain failures, allow us to assess the impact of digital options on the economic indicators of machine operation. It is promising to use the methodology to assess the impact of additionally installed sensors and telemetry systems on the reliability of machines.