Self-propelled agricultural harvesting machine and methods for operating a self-propelled agricultural harvesting machine

Abstract

The present application relates to a self-propelled agricultural harvesting machine (1) comprising a pick-up (2) for taking up crop material in the form of a swath (3), further working units (5, 6, 7, 8) for processing the crop, a drive motor (9), a camera device (10) for successively capturing digital images of the swath (3) at at least one capture point (11) located in front of the harvesting machine (1), a speed control system (12) for controlling the travel speed of the harvesting machine (1), a sensor device (13) for successively capturing a mass flow of the crop material to be processed by the working units (5, 6, 7, 8) during harvesting, and a data processing device (14). In order to provide a self-propelled agricultural harvesting machine that is better protected against overloading of the working units compared to the prior art, it is proposed thatthat the data processing device (14) is designed and configured to process the digital images captured by the camera device (10) in such a way as to determine a swath cross-section of the harvested crop swath (3) at the detection point (11), to receive the current driving speed from the speed control system (12) and to estimate a volume flow rate of the harvested crop from this driving speed and the swath cross-section, to predict a mass flow rate of the harvested crop based on the estimated volume flow rate by applying a conversion factor, which is to be processed by the working units (5, 6, 7, 8) at a time delay after the detection of the swath cross-section, and to control the speed control system (12) in such a way that the driving speed is changed depending on the predicted mass flow rate.

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