Showing papers in "Biosystems Engineering in 2014"

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a comprehensive literature review on the aspects of supply chain management that are influenced by traceability, which is considered fully integrated in the chain management and not kept separately.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a comprehensive hierarchical decision-making framework and a critical taxonomy that apply to all stakeholders involved in the design and management of efficient agrifood supply chains.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a review of current and required advances in agricultural machinery management to prepare for future intelligent manned and/or autonomous sustainable operations in agriculture. But, they do not discuss the future requirements which will facilitate and set the framework for the development efforts necessary for fully implementing future agricultural management models and tools.

TL;DR: In this article, a non-linear elastic contact model was compared with a linear hysteretic spring contact model that considers the plasticity of the soil particles, and an improved correlation was obtained between the measured draft and vertical force results using the linear hystertic spring (plastic) contact model.

TL;DR: The fineness of the laser scanning measurement system indicated its appropriateness for high-precision phenotyping in plant breeding as well as for detailed morphological measuring questions in the fields of biology and agronomy.

TL;DR: A new two-step method to locate and count pepper fruits is described: the first step is to find fruits in a single image using a bag-of-words model, and the second is to aggregate estimates from multiple images using a novel statistical approach to cluster repeated, incomplete observations.

TL;DR: In this paper, a flat die pellet mill was used to understand the effect of high levels of feedstock moisture content in the range of 28-38% with die rotational speeds of 40-60 Hz, and preheating temperatures of 30-110°C on the pelleting characteristics of 4.8mm screen size ground corn stover using an 8mm pellet die.

TL;DR: The algorithm was able to accurately detect and count 80.4% of citrus fruit in a validation set of images acquired from a citrus grove under natural outdoor conditions and could be further improved to provide growers early yield estimation.

TL;DR: The use of cow individual consecutive measurements improved the correct classification rate of an automatic lameness detection system and improved the classification output of a computer vision based algorithm for automated lameness scoring.

TL;DR: In this paper, two prototypes of semi-transparent bifacial photovoltaic modules intended for greenhouse roof applications were developed, and the conversion efficiencies from sunlight energy irradiated on the 108mm×-90mm area into electrical energy were 4.5% for the PV1 module and 1.6% for PV2 module.

TL;DR: In this article, the pericarp of mangos at different stages of ripeness was evaluated based on the analysis of hyperspectral images, and a 97.9% rate was achieved on the third day after the damage had been caused using k-Nearest Neighbours and the whole spectra.

TL;DR: In this paper, a process for ammonia removal through air stripping of digested dairy manure was developed and optimised, and feasibility was demonstrated, and the optimised effluent pH for ammonia stripping was 10.3 with a corresponding lime dosage of 3.3, resulting in 90% ammonia removal.

TL;DR: In this paper, a real-time pneumatic hoe actuation based on an accurate odometry sensing technique was used for intra-row weed control in row crop production systems.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors applied Life Cycle Assessments to a number of tillage scenarios and whole field operations sequences, the energy efficiency and environmental impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) were evaluated.

TL;DR: In this article, the efficiency of a photovoltaic-Geothermal Heat Pump integrated system (PV-GHP) as a greenhouse heating system, compared to a conventional hot air generator using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG-HG), was demonstrated via environmental analysis.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors used an activity index and a multilayer feed forward neural network (ANN) to classify pigs into high aggression and medium aggression events with a sensitivity of 86.8% and specificity of 94.5% respectively.

TL;DR: In this article, the analysis and prediction of the stacking compression load capacity of corrugated boxes is important to study the response of existing packaging to mechanical stress or to design new boxes to meet postharvest handling conditions.

TL;DR: An emulsified fuel containing 10% and 15% water by volume was prepared from a diesel blend with 10% Jatropha biodiesel (JB10) to evaluate the combustion characteristics of a 10.3-kW, single cylinder, 4-stroke, water cooled, direct injection (DI) diesel engine.

TL;DR: In this paper, a method to detect the peduncle of fruits is presented based on a novel signature of the contour of the pedicel, which can be easily implemented in automated inspection systems to accurately estimate the weight of a wide range of fruits.

TL;DR: In this article, an optical multisensor system that can detect and identify biotic and abiotic stresses was developed to optically discriminate between healthy and water stressed wheat canopies.

TL;DR: The effects of acidification reduction on methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen sulphide (H2S) emissions from digested pig slurry during storage were investigated in this paper.

TL;DR: In this paper, the potential of soil diffuse reflectance near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy for the rapid estimation of selected key engineering soil properties was investigated, and two samples sets representing different soils from across the Lake Victoria basin of Kenya were used for the study.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed the available technologies used for fruit detachment and the introduction of a continuous harvesting system, based on a tractor-drawn canopy shaker, to work around the large canopy trees.

TL;DR: In this article, a method for detecting apples in tree images using shape analysis is presented, where the core of the procedure consists of a so-termed convexity test that identifies edges that could correspond to 3D convex objects of a given size range from a much larger set of edges.

TL;DR: In this article, the effects of bulking agents and mixing ratios on greenhouse gas and NH 3 emissions from composting digested solids (DS), separated from anaerobically digested manure and other bio-wastes, in small-scale laboratory composters were investigated.

TL;DR: In this article, an industrial prototype continuous microwave-assisted system (MWS) was specified, built and implemented as an industrial process to condition olive paste, and the developed system was tested to assess its performance during implementation in an industrial olive oil extraction plant.

TL;DR: Based on laboratory experiments, a vision method for use in open fields has been developed and in the last experiment, the system approached the scores obtained by the experienced crop experts.

TL;DR: A new vegetation segmentation method based on Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) clustering and morphology modelling in CIE L∗a∗b∗ colour space is presented and it is demonstrated that the proposed method yielded the highest mean of segmentation qualities and lowest standard deviations of segmentsation qualities.

TL;DR: In this paper, the results indicated that a satisfactory estimation of LWP at tree canopy and leaf levels can be obtained using vegetation indices based on the near infrared-shortwave infrared (NIR-SWIR) domain requiring, however, a specific optimisation of the corresponding center-bands.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the use of drip and surface irrigation decision support systems to select among furrow, border and drip irrigation systems for cotton, considering water saving and economic priorities.