Manual GPS guidance system for agricultural vehicles

C Amiama-Ares,C J Alvarez-Lopez,J Bueno-Lema,J A Riveiro-Valiño

doi:10.5424/sjar/20110903-353-10

C Amiama-Ares, C J Alvarez-Lopez + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5424/sjar/20110903-353-10

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Abstract

In this paper, the performance of a manual GPS guidance system to assist farming operations is evaluated. The distribution of granular fertilizer was simulated in order to discretize areas with excessive application of fertilizers and areas with fertilizer application rates below the intended rate. The path of travel followed by a tractor with the manual GPS guidance system was analysed and compared with a commercial parallel tracking system and without guidance assistance. In addition, the analysis evaluated how the use of manual GPS guidance systems improves the performance of field operations that require large distances between passes. Under the experimental conditions used, the best results were obtained using a commercial parallel tracking system but, for our purposes, small differences were observed between the results obtained with the commercial system and the results obtained with the developed manual GPS guidance system, getting pass-to-pass average error values of 0.26 and 0.73 m, respectively. The results obtained with both systems were significantly better than the results obtained when no guidance assistance was used. In our trials, area with appropriate fertilizer rate was clearly increased when guidance assistance was used. Values of area with correct fertilizer rate applied ranged between 87% with commercial parallel tracking and 59% without guidance assistance. The use of the manual GPS guidance system presented in this paper has proved sufficient to obtain good results for mechanical fertilizer spreading.

Highlights

The reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) adopted by the European Union in 2003 has introduced a system of single farm payment and has decoupled production support
The preliminary visual analysis of results suggested that the performance obtained with the John Deere Parallel Tracking system was better than the performance obtained with the guidance system developed by our research group
The results obtained for each treatment would be different at 0.01 significance level. These results are in agreement with the results reported by other authors (Stoll and Kutzbach, 1999; Wilson, 2000) and suggest that it is difficult to keep the required distance between passes with large implement widths without guidance assistance

Summary

Introduction

The reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) adopted by the European Union in 2003 has introduced a system of single farm payment and has decoupled production support. Council Regulation (EC) No 1782/2003 of 29 September 2003 has introduced the concept of cross compliance Based on this concept, farmers will receive direct payments on condition that they adopt good agricultural practices and meet the requirements established by community legislation in the areas of public, animal and plant health, and environment and animal welfare (cross compliance). With the gradual increase in equipment widths, it becomes increasingly difficult for the operator to determine visually from the cab whether path spacing is appropriate (Wilson, 2000). Such an effect is more pronounced when field operations are performed by very wide machines and there are no visual indicators. Improving fertilizer distribution is beneficial to the environment, insofar as environmental problems caused by excessive fertilizer application rates are avoided and a more sustainable agriculture is achieved

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