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US 7,742,860 B2Granted
Route planning system and method for agricultural working machines
AssigneeCLAAS Selbstfahrende Erntemaschinen GmbH
InventorsNorbert Diekhans, Jochen Huster, Andreas Brunnert
Life of this patent
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Abstract
In a route planning system and method for agricultural working machines, a defined working width is assigned to the agricultural working machines to generate driving routes in a territory, and dynamic adaptation of the planned driving route is carried out thereby ensuring that the driving route to be covered is flexibly adaptable to changing external conditions such as driving around obstacles, thereby largely relieving the operator of the agricultural working machine of the task of performing laborious steering maneuvers.
Claims42
A route planning system for agricultural working machines, comprising
- means for assigning a defined working width to the agricultural working machines to generate a planned driving route in a territory, and for dynamic adaptation of the planned driving route by recognizing a deviation in actual working machine position from a planned driving route position carried out by an operator steering a working machine in any manner and recognizing a change in a working sequence on a certain territory carried out by an operator of a working machine at any time, and based on said recognized deviation and said recognized change in working sequence, an actual machine position and an actual machine orientation, previously covered territory and at least one optimization criteria which is a shortest driving route or shortest working time of a working machine, generating a new driving route, thereby ensuring that the planned driving route to be covered is flexibly adaptable to changing external conditions including driving around obstacles, and automatically working the new driving route thereby largely relieving the operator of the agricultural working machine of the task of performing laborious steering maneuvers.
A route planning system for agricultural working machines, comprising means for
- assigning a defined working width to the agricultural working machine to generate planned driving paths for working a territory,
- formulating a working strategy for working said territory and for recognizing a deviation in an actual working machine position with respect to a planned driving path carried out by an operator steering a working machine in any manner, and based on said deviation, an actual machine position and an actual machine orientation, previously covered territory and at least one optimization criteria which is a shortest driving route or shortest working time of a working machine, dynamically adapting the planned driving path to generate a new working path;
- wherein said means formulates said working strategy by
- connecting parallel driving paths (25, 26) and turning curves (37);
- incorporating the number and position of additional agricultural working, machines (3, 4) used on the territory (21) to be worked;
- considering the working machine kinematics (12), the geometry of the territory (21) to be worked and obstacles (27) in the territory (21) to be worked;
- considering harvested crop conditions (13);
- considering customer requests and
- implementing specified working sequences whereby driving routes and associated working sequences of a large number of agricultural working machines are coordinated and driving paths composed of parallel driving paths and turn-around curves, of various agricultural working machines can be harmonized such that working machines that are working together always operate using substantially same driving paths and always turn around in substantially same areas.
6 more elements
A route planning method for agricultural working machines, comprising the steps of
- assigning a defined working width to the agricultural working machines to generate planned driving routes in a territory;
- and
- carrying out dynamic adaptation of the planned driving routes by recognizing a deviation in actual working machine position from a planned driving route position carried out by an operator steering a working machine in any manner, recognizing a change in a working sequence on a certain territory carried out by an operator of a working machine at any time and based on said recognized deviation and said recognized change in working sequence, an actual machine position and an actual machine orientation, previously covered territory and at least one optimization criteria which is a shortest driving route or shortest working time of a working machine, generating a new driving route to which the working machine is automatically adapted, thereby ensuring that a driving route to be covered is flexibly adaptable to changing external conditions including driving around obstacles, and automatically working the new driving route, thereby largely relieving the operator of the agricultural working machine of the task of performing laborious steering maneuvers.
A route planning method for agricultural working machines, comprising the steps of
- assigning a defined working width to the agricultural working machine to generate planned driving paths for working a territory,
- formulating a working strategy for said working machines based on said assigned working widths,
- recognizing a deviation in an actual working machine position carried out by an operator steering a working machine in any manner,
- dynamically adapting a planned working path to generate a new working path based on said recognized deviation, an actual machine position and an actual machine orientation, previously covered territory and at least one optimization criteria which is a shortest driving route or shortest working time of a working machine,
- carrying out the working strategy to include
- connecting parallel driving paths (25, 26) and turning curves (37);
- incorporating the number and position of additional agricultural working machines (3, 4) used on the territory (21) to be worked;
- considering the working machine kinematics (12), the geometry of the territory (21) to be worked and obstacles (27) in the territory (21) to be worked;
- considering harvested crop conditions (13);
- considering customer requests;
- and
- implementing specified working sequences whereby driving routes and associated working sequences of a large number of agricultural working machines are coordinated so that the working strategy is formulated by harmonizing the driving paths including parallel driving paths and turn-around curves of various agricultural working machines such that working machines that are working together always use substantially same driving paths and always turn around in substantially same areas.
9 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.