Development and performance evaluation of an automatic control system for sugarcane harvester extractor

• An automatic control system for sugarcane harvester extractor was designed and developed. • A VUFMA-PID control method was proposed to improve the control accuracy. • Performance of the control system was verified under different feed fluctuation orders. • The control system exhibited strong adaptive adjustment ability and improved the harvest quality. Real-time adjustment of extractor speed according to feed rate is essential to reduce impurity content and cane loss in mechanized sugarcane harvesting. An automatic control system for sugarcane harvester extractor was developed in this study aiming to achieve dynamic matching between speed and feed rate, thereby reducing impurity content and cane loss during harvesting. An optimal control strategy between feed rate and rotational speed was established using impurity content and cane loss as indicators. A variable universe fuzzy multi-parameter adaptive PID (VUFMA-PID) control method was proposed and modeled in Simulink. Compared with conventional PID and fuzzy PID, the VUFMA-PID achieved the shortest steady-state response time, 0.32 s and 0.26 s faster than PID and fuzzy PID, with both steady-state error and maximum overshoot reduced to zero. Field experiments were conducted under different feed rate fluctuation orders, with fixed extractor speed and manual adjustment speed based on operator experience used as control groups. The results indicated that, compared to manual and constant mode, the average power consumption of the automatic control mode was reduced by 17.44 % and 30.40 % respectively. The average impurity content was 4.00 %, which decreased by 23.58 % and 10.71 %. The average cane loss was 1.89 %, which decreased by 25.01 % and 28.52 %. The developed automatic control system effectively adapts to varying feed rates and significantly improves harvesting quality. It provides a feasible solution and theoretical support for intelligent control in mechanized sugarcane harvesting.