Forward-looking perception and machine control during crop harvesting operations
AssigneeDeere & Company
InventorsRyan R. White, Ashraf Qadir
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A computer-implemented method includes obtaining harvest data indicative of a prior harvesting operation on a field, identifying a region of the field having already-harvested crop plants based on the harvest data, detecting a characteristic of crop plants in a field in a path of an agricultural harvesting machine in a direction of travel, generating, based on the detected characteristic, a height metric representing a height of the crop plants on a particular area of the field, and generating a control signal to control the agricultural harvesting machine based on the height metric and the identified region.
Claims20
A computer-implemented method comprising:
- obtaining harvest data indicative of a prior harvesting operation that includes a prior harvesting pass of one or more harvesting machines, performed prior to obtaining the harvest data, on a field;
- identifying a region of the field having already-harvested crop plants based on the harvest data;
- detecting a characteristic of crop plants on the field in a path of an agricultural harvesting machine in a direction of travel;
- generating, based on the detected characteristic, a height metric representing a height of the crop plants in the path;
- and
- generating a control signal to control the agricultural harvesting machine based on the height metric and the region.
An agricultural harvesting machine comprising:
- a controllable subsystem;
- a forward-looking crop sensor configured to generate a sensor signal indicative of a detected characteristic of crop plants in a field in a path of an agricultural harvesting machine in a direction of travel;
- crop state determination logic configured to:
- obtain harvest data indicative of a prior harvesting operation on the field that includes a prior harvesting pass of one or more harvesting machines prior to the crop state determination logic obtaining the harvest data;
- identify a region of the field having already-harvested crop plants based on the harvest data;
- generate, based on the detected characteristic, a height metric representing a height of the crop plants on a particular area of the field;
- and
- a control system configured to control the controllable subsystem based on the height metric and the region.
A control system for an agricultural harvesting machine, the control system comprising:
- harvest data processing logic configured to:
- receive harvest data indicative of a prior harvesting operation that includes a prior harvesting pass of one or more harvesting machines, performed prior to obtaining the harvest data, on a field;
- and
- identify a region of the field having already-harvested crop plants based on the harvest data;
- crop state classification logic configured to:
- detect a characteristic of crop plants on the field in a path of an agricultural harvesting machine in a direction of travel;
- and
- generate, based on the detected characteristic, a height metric representing a height of the crop plants in the path;
- and
- control logic configured to generate a control signal to control the agricultural harvesting machine based on the height metric and the region.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.