Month: April 2021

1. Overlap: How bad is it?   I have heard of stories of how some farmers could drive, straight as an arrow and with no overlap, hour after hour, day after day; but, I knew that I overlapped when I drove, and I had seen many fields in which overlap was evident.  But, just how much was this overlap? Could it be measured?   Was I trying to solve the problem of eliminating the overlap, if it really wasn’t a significant problem?  After some investigation, it became apparent to me that no one had actually measured the overlap of manual driving.  We needed a way to measure this and we had to do this without the operator being aware of the measurement being taken.   I was well aware of an operator being able to drive more accurately when he or she was aware that someone was watching. I knew first-hand that I always was much sharper, and drove more accurately when someone was watching or where it would be noticed from the road. The overlap measurement must be done without the driver being aware of our intent.

  We devised three non-intrusive ways to measure overlap:. 

  a) Stop and spot and measure the actual overlap with a measuring tape.

  b) Measure the width of the field, and the width of the implement. By counting the number of passes made to complete the field, one could calculate the overlap.  The number of passes multiplied by the width of the implement would equal the field width.  Any excess passes to this would be overlap.

 c)  I rented a plane and had my passenger take a number of pictures of a farmer driving as I buzzed the operation from behind, without the farmer being aware of our presence.  After analyzing the photos for relative widths; it was determined that the overlap increased and was proportional to the implement’s width.

   The overall average overlap was 10% of the implement’s width.  A ten-foot implement would typically result in one foot of overlap, whereas a 50 foot implement would result in five feet of overlap.  Now we knew, and yes it would be a worthwhile project to reduce or even eliminate the overlap.

  There have been many improvements to crop production over the years. Most of these improvements have originated from the farmers themselves. I grew up on a farm observing many of the changes.  When I was ten years old, just a kid, I was driving tractor, a John Deere 830  pulling a 14 foot cultivator.  My Dad would do the perimeter of field for headlands and around the sloughs; and after doing the strike line, I was put on the open-air tractor to slowly go back and forth until the field was done. I couldn’t get into too much trouble – nothing to hit. Just wide open, back and forth.   Oh, it was so boring.  And I had plenty of time to think about how this could be done better.  I wasn’t the best driver, getting the line crooked, and the overlap was terrible; but I learned quickly that overlapping was much preferred over the deadly sin of missing.  I just kept thinking: There must be a better way; I didn’t know what that better way was, but surely there must be.

    I didn’t do much until I graduated as an Engineer and worked in Ottawa on new computerized telephone switches.  I learned about computers from the ground up and soon learned what computes could and couldn’t do.  I was intrigued by how a computer could control equipment.  I also became a pilot and learned about auto-pilots.  If a plane could be set up to drive automatically from point A to point B; then why couldn’t a tractor be programmed to drive from point A, at one end of the field, to point B, at the other end of the field.  I got my chance to tackle this question.

   In 1982, I was hired into the Engineering Faculty at the University of Regina.  This was my opportunity to work on the problem of driving farm tractors better – without overlap or missing. A tractor with auto-pilot or auto-steering. To do this, we needed to know where the tractor was at all times; we needed a positioning system.  There was no GPS, so a positioning system needed to be developed.  With the help of a few students, we developed our own positioning system. In 1985 a John Deere 4020 was outfitted with some crude steering wheel controls to drive and work a small field, including turns. We used an Osbourn portable computer to do the calculations of triangulating to our VHF beacons to determine the position of the tractor. CBC recorded the demonstration and it was broadcast in Canada on Country Canada in 1985. This was the debut for auto-steering; we showed that it could be done; but, did farmer’s really want or need it?

    Now that I am retired, I decided to put my thoughts and experience down on paper. Taking what I learned as a boy on the farm, hoeing in the garden and driving tractor as a kid; and my experience with being a pilot and as a professor in electronic engineering, I am in a unique position to bring all this together in what I think are some pretty exciting changes that can be achieved in farming, using existing technology. These are my ideas that I have developed throughout the years and as such I am writing this in the first person.  This is the first chapter of my story; there are many to follow.