Effect of Soil Properties and Powertrain Configuration on the Energy Consumption of Wheeled Electric Agricultural Robots

Agricultural emissions can be significantly reduced with smart farming, which includes moving away from large conventional tractors to fleets of compact wheeled electric robots. This paper presents a novel simulation modeling approach for an ATV-sized wheeled electric agricultural robot pulling an i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energies (Basel) 2024-02, Vol.17 (4), p.966
Main Authors: Kivekäs, Klaus, Lajunen, Antti
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Air quality management
All terrain vehicles
Alternative energy sources
Carbon footprint
Computer simulation
Computer-generated environments
Efficiency
Energy consumption
Energy use
Farm machinery
Farm tractors
Farming
Four-wheel drive
Motor vehicle fleets
Motor vehicles
Powertrain
Renewable resources
robot
Robots
Simulation
Simulation methods
Tires
tire–soil model
Tractors
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Summary:Agricultural emissions can be significantly reduced with smart farming, which includes moving away from large conventional tractors to fleets of compact wheeled electric robots. This paper presents a novel simulation modeling approach for an ATV-sized wheeled electric agricultural robot pulling an implement on deformable terrain. The 2D model features a semiempirical tire–soil interaction model as well as a powertrain model. Rear-wheel drive (RWD), front-wheel drive (FWD), and all-wheel drive (AWD) versions were developed. Simulations were carried out on two different soils to examine the energy consumption and tractive performance of the powertrain options. The results showed that energy consumption varies the least with AWD. However, RWD could provide lower energy consumption than AWD with light workloads due to lower curb weight. However, with the heaviest workload, AWD had 7.5% lower energy consumption than RWD. FWD was also found to be capable of lower energy consumption than AWD on light workloads, but it was unsuited for heavy workloads due to traction limitations. Overall, the results demonstrated the importance of taking the terrain characteristics and workload into account when designing electric agricultural robots. The developed modeling approach can prove useful for designing such machines and their fleet management.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en17040966