Experimental study on F.US-UFO mower for avoiding obstacles in orchards

The spacing between fruit trees is generally larger than the spacing between plants, which can be directly weeded by lawnmowers, but the weeds between fruit trees cannot be removed by mechanized lawnmower operation. In this paper, a field experiment was carried out on F.US-UFO mower in Yejia Pear Orchard in Taixing Jiangsu Province, Juyingge apple orchard in Peixian County, and Guanshan Catania tree garden in Suining County. The operating performance of the machine was tested by measuring the quality of harvesting grass, cutting width, stubble height, missing rate, obstacle avoidance damage rate, maximum difference between obstacle avoidance height and row height, and shortest obstacle avoidance distance. The field performance was tested using the reliability coefficient, mean time between failures, shift hour productivity, labor productivity, and oil consumption per unit area. The experimental result showed that the F.US-UFO orchard obstacle avoidance mower can accomplish the interrow and interplant mowing. The smaller the slope between orchard rows, the flatter the road surface between orchard, and the larger the row spacing of fruit trees, the higher the operation quality of the lawnmower. The mower’s working efficiency was 0.49 hm~2/h, and the gas consumption per unit area was 11.41 kg/hm~2.