Determination of Efficiency of Lightened Guidance System on Agricultural Machinery: A Case Study on Fertilizer Broadcaster

Year 2011, Volume: 7 Issue: 1, 13 - 17, 01.02.2011

Mehmet Topakcı Mete Has İlker Ünal Murad Çanakcı Davut Karayel Ali Koç

Abstract

Recently, intensive researches
are carried out on tractor guidance system by the researchers. One of these
systems which aim to ease for operators is lightened guidance system in
agricultural applications. Basic elements of the lightened guidance system are
GPS receiver and light bar. The system is to provide
as a parallel tracking according to based reference track. The operator steers simply the vehicle manually, using the lightbar
as a guide for staying on track. Therefore, uniformity at row spacing on field
is provided by the lightbar. In this study, geographical coordinate data during
the granule fertilization application by using a fertilizer broadcaster was
collected and analyzed. Three different operators drove the tractor with and
without assistance of lightened guidance system. The collected data in both
situations were mapped by the ARCGIS 9.3 software. Then, mean row spacing and deviations
from row spacing were determined. The efficiency of the lightened guidance
system was tested for broadcast fertilizer treatment. While row spacing
values with guidance system were changed from 1815.07 cm to 1824.53 cm, row
spacing values without guidance system were changed from 1360.44 cm to 1880.12
cm for three operators. More uniform rows were obtained when the tractor (with
fertilizer broadcaster) driven with the assistance of guidance system.

Keywords

Precision agriculture, guidance system

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