Design on automatic row guidance system for corn harvester header based on improved PSO-PID

Corn harvesters often face issues such as misalignment with crop rows, missed cuts, and suboptimal harvesting quality, particularly when dealing with corn plants exhibiting non-linear growth patterns. These challenges hinder the mechanical automation of harvesting. To address this, we propose the design of an automatic row guidance system for corn harvesters. The system is primarily composed of three components: a mechanical row guidance device, a steering wheel deflection angle detection device, and a steering control system. Both the mechanical row guidance device and the steering wheel deflection angle detection device operate based on a pure tracking model of a two-wheeled vehicle to detect lateral deviations and current lateral errors in real time. The steering control system utilizes an improved PSO-PID control method to adjust the harvester’s travel path, thereby further mitigating the lateral deviation. The system’s performance was evaluated through Matlab simulations, analog scenarios, and field tests. The simulation results indicated that, compared to traditional PSO-PID control, the improved PSO-PID control reduces the square wave overshoot by 94.3% and the maximum sinusoidal error by 95.5%. In the analog scenario experiments, when the vehicle speed did not exceed 4 km/h, the deviation in the straight-line path trajectory was maintained within ±20 cm, and the proportion of deviation within ±20 cm in curved paths exceeded 93%. Field test results demonstrated that the deviation proportion at speeds ranging from 1 to 4 km/h was greater than 90%. Moreover, the system maintained a control accuracy within ±10 cm at 82.1%, even at a speed of 4 km/h. These experimental findings confirm that the system satisfies operational requirements and provides valuable technical support for the automation of agricultural harvesting.