Study of an onboard information platform for a grain combine harvester.

Wheat is the main grain crop in China. The planted area has increased to more than 300 million mu (about 20 million ha) and the rate of machinery harvest has reached about 80%. It is difficult to provide accurate information of wheat yield per mu in different areas. This makes national macro-management and safeguarding food security difficult. The combine harvester onboard information platform studied in this paper has two functions. First, it detects geographical information, harvested area and crop yield per mu and, second it reports the state of the harvester and diagnoses faults. The information platform provides service information for the driver which improves reliability. In addition, it can send this information to an information centre through a GSM (mobile phone) message module, and this centre can forward the information to government administration and research institutes through the network. The on board information platform cored with SCM 80C196 confirms geographical information of the harvester by GPS (global positioning system) to create an electronic map of the harvest area with actual harvest width and distance of travel. With measurements taken when unloading the grain, crop yield per mu can be calculated and the running status of the harvester as well as fault diagnosis through monitoring sensors can be appraised. Experiment shows that the measurement accuracy of harvest area and thus of yield per mu is about 95%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]