Round Bale Yield Mapping During Pre-Completion Formation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing yield maps for round bales lack detail and specificity, requiring post-processing of completed bales and reducing their value for certain harvest operations.
Innovation Solution
A round baler system equipped with sensors to measure bale size, weight, moisture, and location, along with a controller to estimate density and generate a yield map in real time during bale formation, allowing for highly detailed yield data generation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If yield map is generated based on average bale density after bale completion, then the yield map can be calculated with simple post-processing, but the yield map lacks detail and specificity
Solution Approach 1:
The bale is divided into multiple radial layers, with each layer corresponding to crop material from a specific field region. This segmentation allows the system to track and calculate yield for each layer independently, providing detailed yield maps while using the existing baling process without requiring fundamental system changes.
Solution Approach 2:
The system determines the field origin location of crop material for each radial layer during bale formation, before the bale is complete. This preliminary tracking of material origins enables detailed yield mapping to be generated in real-time during baling operations, rather than requiring post-processing of completed bales.
2Productivity
If yield map generation requires completion of a specific bale, then the calculation is simplified, but the yield map becomes latent and reduces value for harvest operations
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs yield calculations for each radial layer during the formation of the current bale, using data from previous completed bales to estimate densities. This allows yield information to be generated in real-time as baling progresses, eliminating the latency of waiting for bale completion while maintaining calculation accuracy through iterative estimation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses density data from previously completed bales to estimate the density of radial layers in the current bale during formation. This feedback mechanism allows continuous refinement of yield estimates as more data becomes available, enabling real-time yield mapping without sacrificing accuracy.
3Measurement precision
If the system tracks field origin location for each radial layer, then detailed yield maps are generated, but the data processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The bale is divided into multiple radial layers, with each layer corresponding to crop material from a specific field region. This segmentation allows the system to track and calculate yield for each layer independently, providing detailed yield maps while using the existing baling process without requiring fundamental system changes.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a digital representation (copy) of the bale's radial layer structure and associates each layer with its field origin location. This digital model allows complex spatial relationships to be tracked and processed through software algorithms rather than requiring complex physical tracking mechanisms.
Data Source
AI summary
A round baler includes a bale size sensor operable to detect a radial size of a bale during formation thereof, a bale weight sensor operable to detect a weight of a completed bale, and a location sensor operable to determine a respective field origin location of the crop material gathered for each respective one of a plurality of radial layers of the bale. A controller calculates a density of a completed bale with data from the bale weight sensor and the bale size sensor. The controller determines a volume of a respective one of the radial layers during formation of a current bale, subsequent to the completed bale, with data from the bale size sensor. The controller may then estimate a density of the respective one of the radial layers based on the volume of the respective one of the radial layers, and the density of the previously completed bale.