Abstract
Large mobile irrigation machines are self-propelled sprinkler irrigation systems which farmers are rapidly adopting due to the high precision of the irrigation application. Although it is highly desirable that control systems be used with such machines to both optimise the irrigation water volume applied to field crops and optimise water use efficiency, there are difficulties in applying classical control techniques. These are caused principally by the very slow speed of crop growth-response and stress-response dynamics; but in addition characteristics of the plant which are poorly known and in-field sensors which provide only sparse, low-quality data for feedback control.
This paper outlines the operation of large mobile irrigation machines, analyses the limitations in the application of classical control approaches for their optimal use, and describes the methods that have been used to implement whole-system control via alternative (adaptive) approaches. These involve accommodation of sparse and unreliable input data and the application and evaluation of a range of irrigation volumes on different sub-areas of the field as on-the-go local system identification.
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McCarthy, A., Hancock, N., Raine, S. (2015). Holistic Control System Design for Large Mobile Irrigation Machines. In: Billingsley, J., Brett, P. (eds) Machine Vision and Mechatronics in Practice. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45514-2_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45514-2_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-45513-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-45514-2
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