Development of automatic soil sampling system

精准农业是减少环境负荷、实现农业可持续发展的未来农业新技术。特别是农田土壤状况是最重要的指标或信息之一。实现了土壤取样，分析了土壤状况。然而，由于土壤取样是手工的，需要花费很多时间。本课题的研究是解决这一问题的技术挑战，其目标是开发自动土壤采样系统。自动土壤取样系统的原型于2004年研制成功。这个系统安装在拖拉机上。该系统由取粉的旋转部分、输土部分和土壤取样保持部分组成。一台与GPS（全球定位系统）连接的PC机控制这个系统。由于采集罐是基于GPS数据间歇控制的，保证了恒定距离的土壤采样。在取样过程中，拖拉机不需要停止运行，工作速度达到1m /s。2005 ~ 2006年，对土壤取样的精确定位和土壤输送部分的控制系统进行了改进，保证了土壤的充足量。此外，还研究了土壤含水量、pH值和电导率的实时传感。利用开发的土壤取样系统，绘制了田间特征（N、P、K、EC、pH）的土壤图。开发的系统节省了土壤取样的时间。利用该系统对GPS采样的土壤位置数据进行协调，便于制作土壤地图。

The Precision Agriculture seems to be a new technology for the future agriculture for the reduction of the environmental load and the sustainable agriculture. Especially, the soil conditions of the agricultural field are one of the most important indices or information. The soil sampling has been achieved to analyze the soil conditions. However, it takes much time for the soil sampling because the work is by hand. This research is the technical challenge to solve this problem, and the objective is to develop the automatic soil sampling system.The prototype of the automatic soil sampling system was developed in 2004. This system is attached to a tractor. This system consists of the rotary part for getting the pulverized soil, the soil transport part and the soil sampling and keeping part. A PC connected with GPS (Global Positioning System) controls this system. Because the can which is used to collect the soil was intermittently controlled based on GPS data, the soil sampling of the constant distance is guaranteed. The tractor does not have to stop its running during the soil sampling, and the working speed of 1 m/s is attained.The precise positioning of the soil sampling and the control system of the soil transportation part for keeping of the enough amount of the soil were improved in 2005 to 2006. Furthermore, the real-time sensing of the soil moisture content, pH and EC (Electronic Conductivity) was studied. The soil maps of the field characteristics (N,P,K,EC,pH) were produced from the sampled soil using the developed soil sampling system.The developed system saves the time of the soil sampling. The soil maps are easily produced using this system because of coordinating the soil sampled position data by GPS.