Unmanned combine harvester control system test stand development

Nowadays the robotics is in rapid evolution and encompasses more and more fields of human activities including agriculture. The priority growth area in production of agricultural mobile power units (AMPU) is the robotic automation thereof and making them capable to perform their duties without human involvement, i. e., creation of unmanned AMPUs. An AMPU becomes unmanned when equipped with an automatic control system. Before mounting the control system on AMPUs, system control algorithms and responses to eventual event scenarios when working in field should be developed. The control system should also be tested and tuned up; operational errors should be found out and corrected. So it seems reasonable to create special permanent stands simulating actual conditions for operating unmanned combine harvesters. To make the developed stand constructional design optimal, a multi-objective task has been drawn up to optimize the design consisting of four input and seven output parameters representing the quality criteria of the stand operation. The concept of the unmanned combine harvester control system test stand, its hydraulic system and structure have been developed based on the constructional design optimization solution results. The article presents the stand 3D model made with “COMPAS-3D”, taken as the basis for development of the engineering documentation package required to make a stand prototype. To simulate the various soil action on the combine harvester drive and swivel wheels, numerically simulated models have been developed used to transmit the control signal to the magnetic powder brakes and electronic proportionally controlled flow rate regulators.