Agricultural Vehicle Moisture Mapping for Slippage Avoidance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Agricultural vehicles face efficiency and operational challenges due to varying field conditions, particularly moisture content, which can cause tractive element slippage and hinder smooth traversal.
Innovation Solution
An agricultural system equipped with field sensors to detect moisture content, a computing system to identify zones of excessive moisture, and calculate the probability of tractive element slippage, generating control commands to navigate around problematic areas.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the vehicle traverses the field at defined speeds, then productivity is improved, but tractive element slippage occurs in high moisture zones causing operational inefficiency
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary detection of moisture content zones before the vehicle reaches them. The sensor array identifies high moisture areas ahead of time, allowing the control system to pre-calculate avoidance paths and adjust vehicle trajectory proactively, preventing slippage before it occurs
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors field moisture content through sensor arrays and feeds this information back to the control system. The control system processes real-time sensor data, updates slippage probability calculations, and dynamically adjusts vehicle path and speed to maintain optimal traversal while avoiding high-risk zones
2Reliability
If field sensors and computing systems are added to detect and avoid moisture zones, then slippage risk is reduced, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The vehicle's existing sensor array and computing system are repurposed to perform multiple functions: their primary agricultural functions plus moisture detection and slippage prediction. This multi-functionality approach avoids adding dedicated separate systems, thereby reducing overall complexity while still achieving reliable slippage prevention
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses the vehicle's own existing sensors and computing resources to detect moisture zones and calculate avoidance paths, rather than requiring entirely external or dedicated specialized systems. The vehicle essentially serves itself by leveraging its existing infrastructure for the additional moisture detection and navigation functions
Data Source
AI summary
An agricultural system includes a vehicle including one or more ground tractive elements. A field sensor may be configured to capture data indicative of a moisture content within a field. A computing system may be communicatively coupled to the field sensor. The computing system may be configured to receive data from the field sensor, identify one or more zones of the field having a moisture content that exceeds a defined moisture content, calculate a probability of the vehicle experiencing tractive element slippage while traversing through the one or more zones, and generate a control command based at least in part on the probability of the vehicle experiencing tractive element slippage within the one or more zones.