Abstract:Aiming to solve the problem of that the seed spacing error of corn precision planting caused the seed rate distribution nonuniformity, an online seed spacing monitoring and miss seeding warning system of maize precision planting was designed. The system was mainly composed of an onboard computer, a seeding monitoring electronic control unit (ECU) and related sensors. The corresponding host computer monitoring software and a slave computer program based on an online moving average seed spacing monitoring algorithm were designed for the purpose of achieving seed missing warning according to the seed spacing and its error monitoring on the process of maize precision planting. Firstly, the precise seed dropping monitoring was the premise of seed spacing monitoring, thus a seed count accuracy experiment was designed. The results showed that the 10 simulated travel speeds increased from 3km/h to 12km/h at an interval of 1km/h, the average seed count accuracy of a finger pick-up seed meter and an air suction seed meter was 99.12% and 99.71%, with standard deviation of 0.52% and 0.44%, respectively. The average error of the whole seed count monitoring was less than 1%. Secondly, under the condition of laboratory environment, a system seed spacing monitoring precision experiment based on a highspeed photogrammetry seed spacing testbed was designed. The target seed spacing was set to 25cm, the travel speeds increased from 3km/h to 12km/h at an interval of 1km/h, and the finger pick-up seed meter as the test object. The experimental results showed that the average of absolute seed spacing monitoring error was 2.34cm with standard deviation of 2.56cm. However, there were many seed spacing monitoring outliers. To solve the above problem, a moving average program was designed to analyze the monitoring seed spacings, the results showed that the average absolute of seed spacing monitoring error was 0.79cm with standard deviation of 0.62cm, the maximum of the average seed spacing monitoring error at any travel speed was 1.69cm with standard deviation of 0.23cm. The seed spacing outliers were significantly reduced after moving average processing, and the seed spacing monitoring error was less than 2.00cm. Finally, a test prototype was designed based on an air-suction maize precision planter, and a seed spacing monitoring performance experiment was done in field. In the test, the travel speeds was 5.49km/h and 8.49km/h,respectively, the target seed spacing was set to 25cm, and then 350 continuous emergence spacings were collected. The test results indicated that compared with the emergence moving average spacings, the average seed spacing monitoring error was 1.84cm and 2.22cm, with standard deviation of 1.61cm and 2.13cm, respectively, at the travel speed of 5.49km/h and 8.49km/h. The curve of seed spacing monitoring values were basically coincident with the curve of the emergence moving average spacings values. The online seed spacing monitoring was implemented, and the monitoring precision of the seed spacing uniformity was improved. The results can give a reference to achieve the precise online monitoring system of the maize precision planting uniformity.