Improvement of the performance of the

KLEISER®bh
Rodolfo Vieira Valentim, Lars Sibum, Serhii Demydenko, Gabriel Caraus
Hanze Institute of Technology
Assen, Netherlands
rodolfovieiravalentim@gmail.dom
larssibum@gmail.com
demid-e@bk.ru
gcaraus@mail.ru

Abstract — The repair of road verges is essential concerning During this attempt in order to find a solution, we built a single
for safety of drivers and pedestrians. KLEISER®bh is an plate, but replaced the shield with a ground plate, as it shown in
attachment to an excavator which restore the verge flatness the Figures 8 and 9.
without damaging the road, but the current speed of
operation makes difficult to By The Way B.V. expand its
business. The project team has the challenge of improve the
working speed by automating some of the process of repairing
aspects. We will make an attachment to the KLEISER®bh so
that it can store soil, and that it can release it controlled. We
will use capacitive sensors to monitor the height. An android
app will be made in order to show the parameters to the
operator, and in order to track the covered distance by GPS.

III. RESULTS
Figure 8 - First capacitive sensor topology
The implementation of a level detector using capacitive sensors
was a process following the V-Model (Fig. 7).

Figure 9 - First test with capacitive sensing using Arduino

Fig. 7 V-Model used in the process
In the second iteration, we used the sensor design shown in the
Figure 8. We used an Arduino as capacitance converter that
estimates capacitance by measuring the charging time, in other
words, the output was the time necessary to charge the plate
which is proportional to the plate’s capacitance.
i teration began using a different electrode design and a better
The test of this topology involved following steps:
1. Place container with soil to the plate №1
2. Place container with soil to the plate №2
3. Remove container with soil from the plate №2
4. Place container with soil to the plate №2
5. Remove container with soil from the plate №2
6. Place container with soil to the plate №2
The results were not good enough, with a bad signal-to-noise ratio
and some unexpected behaviors(see figure 10). After that, a new
capacitance converter instead of Arduino.
Item to test Pass Fail

Test 2
sensors
close to
each other

Figure 10: First iteration test results

The second and current design is shown in the Figure 11. We use
a shield to limited the sensing area as explain in the "Capacitive
Sensing: Ins and Outs of Active Shielding", 2015. [13].

Figure 11: Second capacitive sensor topology

To test the sensors we acquired the Texas Instruments

FDC1004EVM which converts the sensor readings to capacitance
which later can be related to: presence and amount of soil near the
sensor. The following tests were performed to understand better if
the sensors work properly:

1. Test 2 sensors close to each other

2. Test 1 sensor close to an electromagnetic motor
3. Test 2 sensors with 1 m long connection wires
4. Test 4 sensors with water
5. Test 4 sensors with soil
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