GPS and Precision Agriculture

Gim Khuan Ng

BAE 4213

Outline

• What is GPS?

• How precision agriculture works?

• Future of precision agriculture

• Driver-less tractor

• Conclusion

What is GPS

• Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based navigation system formed from a constellation of 24 satellites and their ground station.

• Electronically identifying and recording the location of an object or person.

• There are five monitor stations: Hawaii, Ascension Island, Diego Garcia, Kwajalein, and Colorado Springs

GPS monitor stations

Future of precision agriculture

• Automation or robot, which is supported by various sensors can become a reality in precision agriculture.

• GPS technology can be used with different sensors to provide for more complex applications.

• Driverless tractor that can adapt to different agriculture applications by adding with different equipments.

Driverless Tractor

• Parallel swathing – reduce overlap between spray vehicle passes.

• Precision path tracking – planting based on real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS, eliminating row markers can reduce planting equipment cost.

• Remote guidance – remove the operator from dangerous tasks.

• Operator aids for the handicapped – allows disable farmers to perform field operations.

• Multi-vehicle cooperation – enhance productivity for operations typically coordinated between operators in different vehicles.

Conclusion

• GPS and Driverless tractors can be the future of precision agriculture.

• Implementing autonomous technologies will be priorities for research.

• The research outcome can be very beneficial to human.• Automated benefits are associated with increased field

efficiency capacity through faster travel speeds and accuracy and also extending the work day into night time or during low-light operation.

• Provide a safe working environment is very important factor for robot design.

References

• www.gpsworld.com

• aginfo.psu.edu/psa/ ss97/chip4.html

• http://www.asae.org/imis/StaticContent/3/sept/driverless.html

• http://www.geolas.com/Pages/laser.html