Regular mowing operations are required on ridge paths; however, ridge paths are often narrow and sloped, making mechanization necessary from the perspectives of work efficiency and safety. In this study, the performance of currently available commercial mowers was first organized and analyzed, and a conceptual design of a mower specialized for ridge-path operations was proposed. First, a remote-control operation system was adopted to reduce the operator’s workload. Next, a hybrid drive system was employed in which an engine generates electricity to drive electric motors. In addition, a hammer-knife mechanism, which provides high durability and excellent mowing performance, was adopted as the mowing mechanism. Furthermore, in order to enable operation in narrow environments such as ridge paths, the machine width was set to approximately 600 mm. To evaluate the performance of the developed machine, traveling tests, mowing performance tests, and fuel consumption tests were conducted. In the mowing performance tests, evaluations were carried out under different cutting-height conditions, and a high mowing performance of over 96% on average was confirmed under the cutting height condition of 80 mm. In contrast, under the cutting height condition of 180 mm, grass was pressed down beneath the machine body during traveling and did not reach the cutting blades, resulting in a tendency for approximately 15% of the grass to remain uncut on average. In addition, turning tests under slope conditions were conducted on both asphalt and grass surfaces. The results showed that although sufficient performance was not obtained on the asphalt surface under the slope angle condition of 20°, stable traveling and turning performance were confirmed on the grass surface, which simulates actual ridge-path environments. Furthermore, the evaluation of fuel consumption characteristics demonstrated that the developed machine is capable of long-duration continuous operation. From these results, it was confirmed that the developed machine has sufficient adaptability to narrow environments such as ridge paths and exhibits good traveling and mowing performance.
Tanaka et al. (Sun,) studied this question.