Sugar Cane Yield Monitoring System

Abstract

This project involved the design and testing of a sugar cane yield monitoring system,mounted on a Cameco sugar cane combine. The sugar cane yield monitoring system wascomprised of a yield sensor (scale), a data acquisition system, and a differential globalpositioning system (DGPS). A scale mounted in the floor of the elevator took instantaneousmeasurements of the cane yield (weight) directly. A dump wagon equipped with a weighingsystem (weigh wagon) was used for each test. Experiments were run with different levels ofcane maturity, variety, row/section length, and flow rate. For each test, the scale readings weresummed and compared to the weigh wagon. The results showed the different cane varietieshad an effect the on scale readings. However, the maturity of the cane, section length, and theflow rate did not have a significant effect on the scale readings. The scale predicted the weighwagon with a slope of 0.9 and a correlation of 0.966. The average percent error was 11.05%.