New AutoFarm system putting tractor guidance on the curve
Author: Delta Farm Press

Byline: Forrest Laws Farm Press Editorial Staff

Anyone who's ever driven a tractor with a cultivator rig for 10 or 12 hours a day knows that having a GPS guidance system that can steer a tractor or combine in a straight line isn't that big a deal.

It's when a tractor can move down a quarter-mile, curved row with no human hands at the wheel and not plow up any cotton that GPS Guidance Systems will have arrived. AutoFarm, the agricultural arm of the company that developed the first GPS steering system in 1992, believes that day is here.

The Novariant Co., subsidiary was scheduled to introduce its new AutoFarm RTK AutoSteer System at the World Ag Exposition in Tulare, Calif., Feb. 7. But farm editors got a sneak preview of the system near Harlingen, Texas, in January.

With its new RTK (real time kinematic) AutoSteer capability providing sub-inch accuracy, tractors equipped with the company's A5 platform can perform a variety of hands-free steering functions that the older DGPS (Differential Global Positioning Systems) cannot.

Among those are: listing/bedding up, row crop planting, strip-till, ridge-till, postemergence spraying, banding fertilizer, side-dressing and, oh, yeah, cultivating.