Design of a laboratory-scale sugarcane weighing system

Abstract

Recently, sugarcane harvesters have been increasingly used in sugarcane harvesting. Loading trucks were traveling along the harvesters to collect the harvested cane billets. Since cane harvesters are expensive machines, there is an idea of collaborative farming by combining multiple fields from different owners to reduce operating costs and time. However, it is difficult to fairly classify yields from different fields. Site-specific yield monitoring system is not common in typical harvesters. Farmers only know the weight on each truck without its collecting location when selling the sugarcane to the factory. This research was the feasibility study to develop a hydraulic weighing system in laboratory scale for further applying to the side-tipping loading trucks. A low-cost hydraulic weighing system was fabricated. A microcontroller was used to read signals from pressure and gyroscopic sensors and then to calculate the applied load. Accuracy and precision of the system were examined. The coefficient of determination (R2) of the relationship between the actual and determined loads was 0.978. The standard error of prediction (SEP) of the system was 2.348 kg. The results show that there was feasibility to apply the system on farm scale; however, further study with a larger scale should be conducted.