Wireless GPS system for module-level fiber quality mapping: System improvement and field testing

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 farm. This ability would further enable them to implement precise field management practices to ensure that they receive the highest return possible and do not waste materials and other inputs throughout the field. Investigators at Texas A&M have 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 current drawbacks to the wireless-GPS system are that (1) a person must manually trigger the system to send wireless communications when a field machine dumps, (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. An automatic communication-triggering system is the problem to be addressed in this work. Sensors are being added to a harvester to automatically indicate when the machine is dumping a basket load of cotton so that wireless messages can be sent from the harvester to subsequent field machines without human intervention. 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 maps will enable them to create profit maps.