Control Method and Experiments for Longitudinal and Lateral Relative Position of Harvester and Transporter

To accurately control the longitudinal and lateral relative position of a harvester and transporter, such that grain in the harvester can be accurately unloaded into the transporter’s barn, this study established a cooperative harvesting system. This study analyzed the principle of longitudinal and lateral control, compared other control methods, selected the dual PID control with displacement, velocity and acceleration of trajectory planning as the longitudinal control method, used the model predictive control based on two wheeled model as the lateral control method, established co-simulation of Matlab/Simulink and CarSim as well as a four-wheeled differential vehicle for the experiments. Simulation results show that at harvester speeds of 0.6, 0.8, and 1 m/s: longitudinal mean absolute deviation is less than 0.000662 m with standard deviation less than 0.00102 m; lateral mean absolute deviation is less than 0.0499 m with standard deviation less than 0.00972 m. Vehicle test results show that at harvester speeds of 0.6, 0.8, and 1 m/s: longitudinal mean absolute deviation is less than 0.0454 m with standard deviation less than 0.0238 m; lateral mean absolute deviation is less than 0.0097 m with standard deviation less than 0.0174 m. The results show that the proposed control method can satisfy the needs of cooperative operation of harvester and transporter.