Development of a Real-Time Measurement System for Horizontal Soil Strength

Purpose: Accurate monitoring of soil strength is a key technology applicable to various precision agricultural practices. Soil strength has been traditionally measured using a cone penetrometer, which is time-consuming and expensive, making it difficult to obtain the spatial data required for precision agriculture. To improve the current, inefficient method of measuring soil strength, our objective was to develop and evaluate an in-situ system that could measure horizontal soil strength in real-time, while moving across a soil bin. Methods: Multiple cone-shape penetrometers were horizontally assembled at the front of a vertical plow blade at intervals of 5 cm. Each penetrometer was directly connected to a load cell, which measured loads of 0-2.54 kN. In order to process the digital signals from every individual transducer concurrently, a microcontroller was embedded into the measurement system. Wireless data communication was used between a data storage device and this real-time horizontal soil strength (RHSS) measurement system travelling at 0.5 m/s through an indoor experimental soil bin. The horizontal soil strength index (HSSI) measured by the developed system was compared with the cone index (CI) measured by a traditional cone penetrometer. Results: The coefficient of determination between the CI and the HSSI at depths of 5 cm and 10 cm ($r^2=0.67$ and 0.88, respectively) were relatively less than those measured below 20 cm ($r^2{\geq}0.93$). Additionally, the measured HSSIs were typically greater than the CIs for a given numbers of compactor operations. For an all-depth regression, the coefficient of determination was 0.94, with a RMSE of 0.23. Conclusions: A HSSI measurement system was evaluated in comparison with the conventional soil strength measurement system, CI. Further study is needed, in the form of field tests, on this real-time measurement and control system, which would be applied to precision agriculture.