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Scientia Silvae Sinicae ›› 2025, Vol. 61 ›› Issue (8): 11-24.doi: 10.11707/j.1001-7488.LYKX20240430

• Special subject: Special topic on forestry mechanization operations • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Design and Simulation of Walnut Vibration Harvesting Control System Based on PLC

Yu Ru1,2,*(),Guopeng Xu1,Gaoming Fan1,Qiujie Li1,Yongkui Yi1,Li Ding1,Hongping Zhou1,2   

  1. 1. College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University Nanjing 210037
    2. Co-Innovation Center of Efficient Procerssing and Utilization of Forest Resources, Nanjing Forestry University Nanjing 210037
  • Received:2024-07-11 Online:2025-08-25 Published:2025-09-02
  • Contact: Yu Ru E-mail:superchry@163.com

Abstract:

Objective: To solve the problems of difficult harvesting, low efficiency, and high cost existing in the traditional manual harvesting method of walnuts. According to the development trend of walnut planting areas in China towards standardized orchards, a walnut vibration harvesting control system based onprogrammable logic controller (PLC) is designed. And the feasibility of the walnut vibration harvesting control system is verified through simulation tests, so as to improve the automation level of walnut vibration harvesting, reduce the difficulty of manual harvesting, and increase the harvesting efficiency. Method: The trunk point cloud is collected by a LiDAR. The data is preprocessed in the Visual Studio 2017 environment, and the trunk information at the optimal point cloud intensity is segmented. The trunk diameter is extracted by using the least square circle fitting method. A fuzzy PID controller is designed by applying the MATLAB software. The system block diagram is built by Simulink to find the optimal parameters of the controller, so as to improve the feasibility of the walnut vibration harvesting control system. The PLC program is designed by using the TIA Portal software to realize the functions of the telescopic vibration arm, clamping function, and vibration function. The human-machine interface is designed by using the Kingview software, and the communication between the PLC and the human-machine interface is realized through ethernet to achieve real-time monitoring after the system runs. The feasibility of the walnut vibration harvesting control system is verified through simulation and physical experiments. Result: By applying the MATLAB software, the optimal parameters of the controller are obtained as Kp = 7.682, Ki = 5.675, and Kd = 1.675. The simulation verification results of the clamping force and vibration frequency under different moving distances and trunk diameters show that when the telescopic distance is between 20 and 100 cm, the error is between 0.02% and 0.15%; when the trunk diameter is between 15 and 20 cm, the clamping force error is stable between 1.20% and 2.72%; and the vibration frequency error is between 0.67% and 3.00%. Through the verification of actual harvesting, the control system can accurately control the movement, clamping, and vibration of the vibration arm. The harvesting efficiency is more than 7 times that of manual harvesting, and the harvesting completion rate is above 81%. Conclusion: In this study, a walnut vibration harvesting control system based on PLC is proposed and designed, and the feasibility of the system is verified through simulation tests. This vibration harvesting control system is suitable for walnut harvesting in standardized orchards, provides a scientific basis and practical guidance for the intelligentization of walnut vibration harvesting, and effectively improves the walnut harvesting efficiency.

Key words: control system, vibrating harvesting, tree trunk recognition, programmable logic controller (PLC)

CLC Number: