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April 11, 2005 3:34 PM   Subscribe

Robo-tractor: Let the GPS do it!
posted by shino-boy (8 comments total)
 
Now farmers can be as lazy and surly as truckers!
posted by pieisexactlythree at 4:10 PM on April 11, 2005


Cool. I knew that farmers have been using GPS to fine tune fertilizer/herbicide application, and that there were new tractors available with steering assist, but I didn't know that they had figured out how to build a bolt on steering assist for older tractors.

Pie, you've obviously never driven a farm tractor with a harrow + a three gang chisel plow + spray rig across a 40 acre field. It ain't for the lazy. (And a 40 acre field is quite small at this point -- it's more of a hobby farmer size than a full time farmer, unless there's a lot of them very close together.)
posted by jlkr at 5:33 PM on April 11, 2005


Touché jlkr. I'm just sayin' that if Homer were a farmer, this is how he'd want to do it. And yeah, the only remaining farms that size are typically specialists in some sort of boutique product, at least it seems like that around here in Oregon.
posted by pieisexactlythree at 5:43 PM on April 11, 2005


They also have this for land moving equipment. Graders, etc.

These things tend to work based on a tracing pattern. You put it in learn mode, and do the field once, and it'll record and replay that set of GPS coordinates and speeds.

One of the issues is that GPS isn't all that accurate, even L1/L2 recievers, so you pay a land surveyor to mark a point on the property, setup some sort of real time location correction system.
posted by SirOmega at 10:21 PM on April 11, 2005


Anyone know where I can download crop circle designs in ESRI format?
posted by UrbanFigaro at 10:27 PM on April 11, 2005


For some reason this reminds me of the robo-transformer-low rider-dancing-riding mower my son and I saw recently in this weird exhibit at the always-strange Mass MOCA.

An interview with the creator [Real Audio file, page down to The Garden of Earthly Delights]. And off-topic, thanks to dhacker and family for housing us during our gallery visit.
posted by LeLiLo at 11:13 PM on April 11, 2005


SirOmega -- The newer GPSes with WAAS (or more generally SBAS or DGPS) *are* really accurate, down to sub-meter accuracy at agricultural speeds (vs. aviation speeds, where the accuracy is in the range of ten meters). If you're willing to go a lot slower (surveyor speeds :), DGPS is accurate to the range of centimeters. To get centimeter-level accuracy on an ag vehicle, you can add on an INS, or subscribe to one of the "RTK GPS" services which can be a little more expensive.

I think one of the other big benefits of systems like this is uniform, recorded application of fertilizers and pesticides. If you can reduce by 10% the double-application of chemicals, you can reduce by 10% your spending on them, and you can probably double your profits, because your profits are probably pretty thin to start with. (Or maybe farming has become some kind of high-margin bonanza since I last checked. :)

I thought they were setting these things loose in the fields, but I guess that's just wishful thinking. It's been over 20 years since I've had to drive a combine, truck, tractor, mower, or baler, and although it was kind of fun at the start, it got old after a week or two. Oh wait, they ARE letting these things loose.
posted by surlycat at 2:04 AM on April 12, 2005


Are there, like, requirements that a farmer actually ride around in the thing while it is on auto-pilot mode? I'm thinking of a robotractor mindlessly bearing down on a helpless 2-year-old lost in the cornfield.

Not that there are a lot of 2-year-olds in the fields, but one can think of a bunch of things that could go wrong with no human around (i.e., animals, new ditches/gulleys, big rocks, etc.).
posted by Mid at 6:40 AM on April 12, 2005


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