During the development of new agricultural machinery, it is critical to thoroughly test the robustness and durability of the new designs. Features such as automatic steering, electronic transmission control and headland management are common place on production vehicles. Autonomous vehicles are common place in military, police and manufacturing environments. These technologies have now been integrated into what is believed to be the first application of autonomy to the development of entire vehicle systems. The integration provides benefits to both the product testing and the product development aspects of the design cycle. These benefits are discussed in the paper. The primary goal of the automation system developed for autonomous testing was to apply the system as unobtrusively onto the production intent vehicle as possible. The automation system consisted of four major components: the Base Station, the Vehicle Command Unit, the Vehicle Interface and the Safety System. There are several different types of tests that have been automated: the load cart test, the dynamometer cart test, the in field implement test and the loader test. There are many advantages to the autonomous testing: these include faster time to market, lower testing cost, increased repeatability and even technology advancement opportunities.
Autonomous in-field durability testing of new vehicle platforms
Autonome Haltbarkeitstest neuer Fahrzeugplattformen
2005
5 Seiten, 1 Bild, 3 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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