Wireless Sensor and Beidou Satellite Short Message Communication-based Cotton Picker Remote Monitoring and Management System

Cluster operation of a cotton picker requires production monitoring, work area statistics, and the collection of work status information. Traditional cotton pickers are either not equipped with a production inspection system or use approximate statistics only. To achieve accurate monitoring of the output of cotton pickers and ensure the accuracy and reliability of remote communication, this study designed a laser- and sensor-based flow-monitoring device that uses a wireless sensor and proposed the use of an image data processing method to accurately calculate cotton flow. BeiDou Navigation Satellite System positioning technology is used to determine the position and area of a cotton picker, and the collected data are transmitted to the dispatch center using BeiDou short message communication technology. The remote monitoring system of the cotton picker includes an onboard vehicle subsystem and a dispatch center. The onboard vehicle subsystem can acquire acquisition information and remotely transmit location information, acquisition area, and acquisition traffic. The dispatch center mainly sends instructions to the cab of the cotton picker for remote management, scheduling, and visual imaging of the track and production statistics of the cotton picker. The monitoring system was installed in the pilot of the 8th Division of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps in China. The cotton quality monitoring accuracy reached 97%, the positioning and ranging errors were less than 1%, and the system can communicate smoothly without a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network area. Keywords: Cotton, Image processing, Production statistics, Remote scheduling, Short message communication, Traffic monitoring.