Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange
Abstract
Mechanization and Automation are very fashionable words in present day Agriculture. Both imply a reduction in the amount of human effort necessary to achieve certain ends, and to accept the need for either of them is to assume that it will lead to some financial gain. Automation as applied to Agriculture is to improve many limited factors which affect the final yield of any agricultural crop. One of these factors, the mechanical operation, requires considerable care and attention to more nearly insure maximum yield and high quality. Numerous methods have been adopted through research and development to minimize field losses of a crop and to improve the quality of product with the use of more adaptable and accurate machines. As such, the objective of this study was: 1. To design, develop, and construct an automatic steering device which would enable a tractor to guide itself down the crop row accurately. The system was to be designed in a manner that would make it possible for the tractor to be used for a variety of crops with little or no change in the automatic steering components. 2. To design a system which could be justified economically where labor is scarce and expensive or unskilled, or where the tractors are operated in hazardous conditions
