The ability to map the profit made across a cotton field would enable producers to see in
detail where money is being made or lost on their farms. This ability, which requires sitespecific
knowledge of yield, fiber quality, and input costs would further enable them to
implement precise field management practices to ensure that they receive the highest
return possible on each portion of a field and do not waste materials and other inputs
throughout the field. Investigators at Texas A&M previously developed a wireless-GPS
system that tracks where a module of cotton comes from within a field. This system is a
necessary component in mapping fiber quality, which is a major determiner of price and
thus profit. Three drawbacks to the previous wireless-GPS system are that (1) a person
must manually trigger the system to send wireless communications when a field machine
dumps its load of cotton, (2) multiple field machines of the same type (e.g., two cotton
pickers) cannot be used simultaneously on the same system within the same field, and (3)
no software is available to automatically produce fiber-quality maps after the data are
downloaded from the gin. The first two drawbacks, the need for an automatic communication-triggering system and the needed capability for multiple field machines of
the same type are the problems addressed in this work. To solve the first problem, a
sensing and control system was added to a harvester to automatically indicate when the
machine is dumping a basket load of cotton so that wireless messages can be automatically
sent from the harvester to subsequent field machines without human intervention. This
automated communication-triggering system was incorporated into the existing wireless-
GPS system, rigorously field tested, and ultimately proven to operate as designed. Linking
data collected with this system together with classing information will enable producers to
create fiber-quality maps, and linking fiber-quality maps with yield and input-cost maps
will enable them to create profit maps. Additionally, a radio-frequency identification
(RFID) system was integrated with the wireless-GPS system to allow for multiple field
machines of the same type. The RFID system was also rigorously field tested and proven to
operate as designed. Finally, the entire system was field tested as a whole and operated
according to design. Thus, the wireless-GPS module tracking system now operates without
human intervention and works with multiple field machines of each type, two additional
capabilities required for practical use in large farming operations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-08-7192 |
| Date | 2009 August 1900 |
| Creators | Sjolander, Andrew J. |
| Contributors | Thomasson, John A., Sui, Ruixiu |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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