Application of Image Processing Technology for Unloading Automation of Robotic Head-Feeding Combine Harvester

Abstract

The automation of agricultural work is expected to solve several of Japan’s agriculture problems and help farmers. It has now become necessary to maintain the sustainability of national agricultural production. Thus, we have been trying to develop a robotic combine harvester. While attempts have been made to develop robotic combine harvester and a few prototypes can run and automatically harvest rice and wheat, the unloading task, in which grains are unloaded through the harvester’s auger into a grain container on a truck, has not yet been automated. This paper presents a method that uses machine vision to position the harvester’s spout at an appropriate point over the grain container on a truck. Experimental results show that this method has sufficient accuracy.