  The hybridization process has recently touched also the world of agricultural
vehicles. Within this context, we develop an Energy Management Strategy (EMS)
aiming at optimizing fuel consumption, while maintaining the battery state of
charge. A typical feature of agricultural machines is that their internal
combustion engine is speed controlled, tracking the reference requested by the
driver. In view of avoiding any modification on this original control loop, an
add-on EMS strategy is proposed. In particular, we employ a multi-objective
Model Predictive Control (MPC), taking into account the fuel consumption
minimization and the speed tracking requirement, including the engine speed
controller in the predictive model. The proposed MPC is tested in an
experimentally-validated simulation environment, representative of an orchard
vineyard tractor.
