Automated Farm Equipment

Automated Farm Equipment

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Airline pilots have certainly been trained to turn on their autopilots and let there techno-craft basically fly itself. Tesla has led the way in making automobiles that can drive themselves. Well, that seems to be where heavy farm equipment is headed. Eric Wilcox of Growmark provides a "theater of the mind" view of what someone learning to operate farm equipment might experience in a virtual simulation training system.

As it set up, we have a front screen, that's your front view looking of the cab and it's just like you're sitting in the cab of a row-gator and the your side views. This is our very basic setup, very simplified. Get in and run. Get used to it. We have the VR goggles go on and you're all are submerged in the cab. If you lean up to look at a tire, look back, look up, you're in the cab and it's primarily just get used to what's going on here, because after we get environment situations all squared away, we're gonna do specific machine training. We're stuck in a shed. We're gonna start up there, is gonna head out through the lot and get on the road and drive to the field. Accidents on the road, left hand, turn traffic behind you. Everyone thinks agricultural. Your equipment should be in the fields, not supposed to be on the road. No one pays attention to hazards. Leave the turn signal on for three miles of not paying attention. So we kind of train them. We have cars in here that don't pay attention. I'll run right into it. We have indicators or hazards. Everything's on when you talk through that weather. But hey, no one's paying attention to you. They're expecting you to get out their way. And we walk through that so we can run over and hit cars in here. And no damage, no injury, nothing. We hit escape. We start all over and we just talk right through it.

Previous ReportFeed a bee
Next ReportPhylloxera