Kentucky FFA students inspected 153 farm tractors for safety features that prevent operator injuries during tractor overturns, highway collisions, runovers, and power take-off (PTO) entanglements. Tractor mean age was 23.6 years (SD = 20.9). Rollover protective structures (ROPS) were present on 50.66% of tractors, but only 33.33% of these had functional seatbelts. Loose and damaged seats were f...

This study describes chores when farmers were either fatally or seriously injured and required emergency medical treatment as a result of overturns of tractors with or without rollover protective structures (ROPS). Data from the 2002 Kentucky Farm Tractor Overturn Survey were used for this study. The data were collected by a telephone survey of a population-based random sample of 6063 (7.98%) o...

Measurement of the values of forces in tractor arms is of great importance due to draft of agricultural equipment. These values can be used for testing and evaluation of the agricultural machinery, selection of suitable tractor, etc. The tools which are used for measurement of the forces are called dynamometer. The main objective of the present study was to design and evaluate a load cell for i...

was seven years old and destined to become a farmer when my father died. His death initiated the first major change in the direction my life was to take. My father had established himself as a successful farmer with a farm on the banks of the Snake River in eastern Oregon. It was close to heaven, with hills to climb and explore, a river for fishing, a field for hunting, and a friendly shepherd ...

Reports from the Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory (NTTL) show improved fuel efficiency during the past 20 years. A 4.8% decrease in average annual specific volumetric fuel consumption for the data used in theASAE Standards was shown. Using fuel consumption and power data from the NTTL reports, new equations for fuel consumption were established that predict fuel consumption for diesel engines d...

A new method is described that can be used to decompose human controlled agricultural operations into an autonomous tractor. Four main levels of subsumption have been identified: Operation, Task, Optimisation and Primitive Actions where each level is subsumed by the level above. Tasks were classified into two distinctive roles, deterministic tasks that can be planned and optimised before the op...

A tractor-trailer robot consists of a carlike tractor towing a passive trailer. Due to its highly nonholonomic nature, the kinematics of this type of robot are complicated and di cult to compute. We present exact closed-form solutions for the kinematic parameters of a tractortrailer robot and use them to construct an exact and e cient motion planner in the absence of obstacles. This local plann...