JP2510690Y2 - Steering device for rice transplanter - Google Patents

Description

[Detailed description of the device] “Industrial application field” The present invention is a rice transplanter equipped with a steering camera for capturing an image of an adjacent seedling row on a machine body so that the machine can be steered along the adjacent seedling row. The present invention relates to a steering device for a machine.

"Prior Art" When performing automatic scanning steering along this adjacent seedling row, it is general that the alignment after turning is performed manually.

"Problems that the device tries to solve" However, it requires skill to perform the alignment accurately,
If automatic steering was started without accurate alignment, there was a problem that the aircraft would meander during the initial period from the beginning of planting due to misalignment between adjacent lines and parallelism.
Further, such meandering is not only accumulated as the work progresses and the finish is not good, but there is a disadvantage that unplanting occurs at the end of the field after planting.

[Means for Solving Problems] Therefore, the present invention is a rice transplanter in which a steering camera for taking an image of an adjacent seedling row is mounted on the aircraft and the aircraft is steered along the adjacent seedling row. Equipped with an alignment confirmation element that detects the proper alignment in the alignment work after turning the aircraft by detecting the adjacent seedling row, and automatically moves the aircraft forward until the proper alignment is achieved after turning the aircraft by manual operation. In addition to being oriented, the aircraft automatically retracts to the planting start position after proper alignment.

[Operation] According to the present invention, the planting is not immediately performed after the aircraft turns at the edge of the ridge, etc., and the plant moves forward until the line meets and then retreats to the planting start position. The planting work is started from the planting start position in the proper alignment state, so that the alignment work can be performed easily and accurately to save labor and improve the planting accuracy. Is something that can be done.

[Example] Hereinafter, an example of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. Fig. 1 is a steering control circuit diagram, Fig. 2 is a side view of the rice transplanter,
FIG. 3 is a plan view of the same, in which (1) is a traveling vehicle on which a work vehicle is mounted and equipped with a mission case (4) on the rear side of the vehicle body frame (3) on which the engine (2) is mounted on the front side. The front wheels (6) for traveling paddy fields are supported by the front axle cases (5) on both rear sides of the engine (2), and the rear axle cases (7) are disposed on both rear sides of the mission case (4). Support the rear wheels (8) for traveling in paddy fields. A steering handle (10) is provided at the rear of the hood (9) that covers the engine (2), and a driver's seat (12) is attached to the upper part of the body cover (11) that covers the axle cases (5) (7) and the like. .

Further, in the figure, (13) is a planting section having a seedling mounting table (14) for multi-row planting and a plurality of planting claws (16) in the planting case (15), and the top link (17). ) And a lowering ring (18) and a three-point link mechanism (19) and an elevating cylinder (20), the planting part (13) is supported movably on the rear side of the traveling machine (1), and the traveling vehicle (1 ) Is moved at a substantially constant speed, and at the same time, two seedlings (16) and (16) are rotated by one rotation of the rotary case (21) from the seedling table (14) that slides back and forth from left to right to produce two seedlings. It is configured to take out and continuously perform seedling planting work.

As shown in FIG. 4, the output from the engine (2) is input to the transmission case (4) via the transmission shaft (22) to drive the front wheels (6) via the front transmission shaft (23). The rear wheels (8) are driven via the rear connection case (24). In addition, steering handle (10) or solenoid (25)
The steering valve (26) that is switched by the front and rear steering cylinders (27) (2) that control the steering of the front wheels (6) and the rear wheels (8).
8) and a hydraulic pump (2
9) via the valve (26) to each cylinder (27) (2
8) is hydraulically connected, and a potentiometer type steering angle sensor (30) for detecting the steering angle which is the steering amount of the front and rear wheels (6, 8) is provided in the front steering cylinder (27).

On the other hand, a two-dimensional CCD (solid-state image sensor) type color camera (31a) (31b) (31c) for capturing the left and right adjacent planted seedling rows in front of and behind the traveling body (1) is attached to the body cover (11). The left and right front cameras (31a) and (31b), which are arranged on the left and right sides of the front part and on the center upper side of the bonnet (9), are used to mount the front left and right cameras (31a) and (31b) on the column (32) and the left and right adjustment frame (33) The front cover (11) is supported by the body cover (11) via the swing fulcrum shaft (34), and the left and right mounting positions of the front cameras (31a) (31b) and the vertical imaging angles of the front cameras (31a) (31b) with respect to the seedlings are set. It can be adjusted appropriately.

In addition, the rear camera (31c) for capturing the image of the adjacent seedlings in the rear is provided with the reflecting mirrors (35a) (3) arranged on both left and right sides of the front part of the body (1).
5b), the vertical fulcrum fulcrum shaft (37), the horizontal oscillating fulcrum shaft (38), the electric horizontal cylinder (39), etc. are mounted on the central fixed mounting plate (36) of the bonnet (9). While supporting the rear camera (31a) via the
1) In the state of being arranged above the adjacent seedling row through the upright / downright / horizontal adjustment metal fittings (41), the horizontal frame (42), the universal bearing (43), etc. on the upright columns (40) on the left and right sides of the front end. The horizontal cylinder (39) supporting the reflecting mirrors (35a) (35b).
When the lens surface of the camera (31c) is made to face the left reflecting mirror (35a) by the expansion and contraction operation of the camera, the adjacent seedlings on the left side of the body behind the reflecting mirror (35a) are vertically and vertically aligned in one row in the rear camera (31).
c) The image is taken in the center of the screen and the rear camera (3
When the lens surface of 1c) is opposed to the right reflecting mirror (35b), the adjacent seedlings on the right side of the aircraft behind the reflecting mirror (35b) are taken vertically and vertically in a single line at the center of the image pickup screen of the rear camera (31c). Rear camera (31c), provided in the center
Thus, it is possible to image any of the adjacent seedling rows on the left and right.

Furthermore, as shown in FIG. 1, the front and rear cameras (31a) (3
1b) Binarization circuits (44) (45) that separate and extract seedlings from the field scene by color from the color image captured in (31c),
A control circuit (46), which is a registration confirmation element composed of a microcomputer, which performs image processing such as linear approximation (how transformation) or calculation of steering operation amount (fuzzy control) on this binarized image, The control circuit (46) is provided with the above-mentioned 2
Deviation and tilt thresholds for inputting and connecting the value conversion circuits (44) and (45) and the steering angle sensor (30), and for setting the allowable thresholds for lateral deviation and tilt with respect to the central steering reference in the seedling row of the imaging screen. The setter (47) (48) is connected to the control circuit (46). A control circuit (46) is output-connected to the steering bubble (26) and the horizontal cylinder (39), and is attached to the mission case (4) to change the traveling speed of the airframe (1) and to travel forward and backward. The control circuit (46) is output-connected to the motor (49) and the planting clutch (50) that turns on and off the drive of the planting section (13), and the front and rear cameras (31a) (31b) (31c) are imaged. The automatic straight-ahead steering control of the machine body (1) and the alignment work after the machine body is rotated are performed based on the detection of the adjacent seedling row by.

The present embodiment is configured as described above, and the automatic straight-ahead steering of the machine body (1) is performed as shown in the flowchart of FIG. When the aircraft (1) is imaged with 31a) (31c) and the images captured by the front and rear cameras (31a) (31c) are binarized by the binarization circuits (44) (45), The seedling image is obtained, and the seedling image is the front camera (31a)
During the detection, the linear approximation is performed by the Hough transform from the image binarized by the front camera (31a), and the inclination of the seedlings and the lateral shift with respect to the steering reference at the center of the screen are obtained. At the same time, a steering operation amount is calculated from these change rates by fuzzy inference, and a straight-ahead steering control along the adjacent seedling row is performed by a switching operation of the steering valve (26) based on this operation amount. . In addition, when the aircraft (1) reaches the vicinity of the turning point such as on the edge of the work and the seedling row is no longer detected from the image from the front camera (31a), it is calculated from the seedling row imaged by the rear camera (31c) The straight-ahead steering control of the airframe (1) is performed based on the steering operation amount to be performed, and the traveling of the airframe (1) is stopped when the seedling row is no longer detected by any of the front and rear cameras (31a) (31c). . Furthermore, when the steering control is going straight ahead, the vehicle reaches the turning point and the front camera (31
When a) detects a turning mark in the front, for example, the straight steering control is stopped and the machine body (1) is manually rotated and the front right camera (31b) and the adjacent seedling row on the right side of the machine body (1) are used for the next planting. Will be adjusted.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the control in the alignment work after the turning, and when the vehicle (1) reaches the turning point, the planting clutch (50) is turned off and the vehicle (1) is turned, and After turning, alignment is performed. If alignment is not performed properly at this time, the front right camera (31
When the forward steering control similar to the above based on the imaged seedling row of b) is performed and the deviation and inclination of the imaged seedling row with respect to the steering reference are within a certain threshold ground, this forward steering control is interrupted and the inclination of the seedling row is The sign of is reversed, that is, the machine body (1) is retracted so as to correct the course direction of the machine body for the inclination of the seedling row, and when the rear camera (31c) detects, for example, a planting start position mark at the rear, the rearward movement is stopped. With the stop position as the planting start position, the normal forward steering control with the planting clutch (50) turned on is performed again.

The rear camera (31c) is configured such that the horizontal cylinder (39) is expanded and contracted every time the machine body (1) is turned to automatically change the imaging direction.

[Effect of Device] As is clear from the above embodiments, the present invention is equipped with steering cameras (31a) (31b) (31c) for capturing images of adjacent seedling rows on the aircraft, and the aircraft follows the adjacent seedling rows. The rice transplanter designed to operate following (1) is equipped with a row alignment confirmation element (46) that detects the proper row alignment in the row alignment work after turning the machine body (1) by detecting the adjacent seedling row. After turning the machine body (1) by manual operation, the machine body (1) is automatically steered until the proper alignment is achieved, and after the proper alignment, the machine body (1) is automatically retracted to the planting start position. With this configuration, after turning the machine body (1), the planting work can always be started from the predetermined planting start position in a proper alignment state to improve the planting accuracy, and the proper alignment is automatically performed after turning. It is possible to reduce labor in work by performing Achieve the effect.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a steering control circuit diagram, FIG. 2 is an overall side view of a rice transplanter, FIG. 3 is the same plan view, and FIG. 4 is a plan explanatory view of a steering section.
5 to 6 are flowcharts. (1) …… Aircraft (31a) (31b) (31c) …… Camera

Claims (1)

(57) [Scope of utility model registration request] 1. A rice transplanter in which a steering camera (31a) (31b) (31c) for picking up an adjacent seedling row is mounted on a machine body so that the machine body (1) is steered along the adjacent seedling row. The machine (1) is equipped with a row alignment confirmation element (46) that detects the proper row alignment in the row alignment work after turning by detecting the adjacent seedling row, and the machine (1) proper row after turning Steering of the rice transplanter characterized by being configured such that the machine body (1) is automatically steered until it becomes a match and the machine body (1) is automatically retracted to the planting start position after proper alignment. apparatus.