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Technical Innovations
Automatic guidance for 2003 Renault tractors
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After two years of research carried out in partnership with Cemagref and LASMEA (Laboratoire des Sciences et Materiaux pour l'Electronique et l'Automatique) of the Blaise Pascal University in Clermont, Ferrand, France, Renault Agriculture has produced its first agricultural tractor automatic guidance system based on a global positioning system (GPS) technology. According to Renault, the tractor lends itself to this type of guidance better than any other land vehicle: speeds are low, fields are now populated only by easily memorizable fixed obstacles (electric pylons, etc.), and stopping distances in the event of problems are short.
Automatic guidance is made possible by a new breed of GPS—dynamic GPS. With accuracy on the order of a few centimeters in all three dimensions, this variation of GPS has already found practical applications in civil engineering (large bridge building), seismology, and vulcanology.
Renault Agriculture and Cemagref have produced an operational tractor guidance system for which a vehicle operator is provided with two operating modes. In the first mode, the tractor is guided automatically over a plot of land after the operator has stored the land's contour, entry point, and tool width. Trajectories are calculated automatically. Certain repetitive tasks to be performed at the start and end of furrows can be carried out automatically by the system.
In the second operating mode, the user first manually carries out a complete work sequence, which is saved by the system. About 1000 h of work can be saved on a CD-ROM. The system can then reproduce the whole sequence of work on this plot of land. Trajectories, including turnarounds, are reproduced, as are actions relating to lifting, power takeoff, power reversal, etc. These saved data can be transferred to a PC and enhanced by precision agricultural software.
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