In the agricultural industry, farming is typically performed using a work machine, such as a tractor, that pulls an implement to work the fields, e.g., for plowing, planting, fertilizing, spraying, and harvesting.
Improvements in crop yield and farming efficiency, as well as reductions in operator fatigue, have been achieved by use of the Global Position System (GPS), which is used to guide the tractor and implement in an efficient manner throughout the fields, for example, reducing the skipping or overlapping of locations in the field, as well as providing the capability to return to a particular location to recommence operations after having depleted onboard supplies, e.g., of seed, fertilizer, and the like, at that location.
Both the tractor and the implement may have mounted thereon a GPS receiver, such as a Star-Fire® position receiver, offered by Deere & Co., which are used to guide the tractor and the implement, and which may provide geopositional data as part of a tracking system, such the as Greenstar® system offered by Deere & Co. Such tracking systems may provide automatic steering or guidance for manual steering via a display, so that the locations of the tractor and implement are controlled precisely.
In order to accurately guide the implement using such a tracking system, it is desirable to know several important parameters. One set of such parameters pertains to the tractor, and includes the distance between the tractor's GPS receiver location and hitch point, and the distance between the hitch point and the tractor's control point (the point about which the tractor turns). These tractor-related parameters are generally known to the operator, for example, having been provided by the manufacturer of the tractor. Another set of such parameters are implement-related parameters, such as the distance between the hitch point (the point where the implement is pivotably attached to the tractor) and the implement-mounted GPS receiver, as well as the distance between the hitch point and the control point of the implement (the point about which the implement turns). Presently, implement-related parameters are typically determined by the operator of the equipment, who must then manually enter the distance data into the tracking system.
However, the implement-related parameters may be difficult to obtain, resulting in inconvenience to the operator. In particular, the implement-related parameters as determined by the operator may also be inaccurate, since the location of the control point of the implement may vary greatly, depending on a range of factors. For example, the control point location may depend on the degree of ground penetration/engagement of the implement, which may vary with soil conditions and the overall weight or ballasting of the implement. The overall weight of the implement may itself vary based on such factors as an amount of fertilizer or other soil/crop treatment loaded onto the implement, which is subsequently depleted during farming operations.
Accordingly, it is desirable to accurately and conveniently determine implement-related parameters for use with a tracking system.