Issue/Background
Carrying out pre-plant
ripping is a vital part of forestry, for it ensures good tree
growth, and acts as guide for correect tree spacings.
In the rolling hills of rural Australia, this meant people
having to walk for miles over the hill putting in pegs to show the
bulldozers the block boundaries, and then go back later with probes
to check the rips were correctly spaced, and deep enough. It
was time consuming, dangerous work, with the risk of a broken ankle
ever present.
Solution
By installing TracMap systems on each bulldozer, it meant
showing them the block boundary was as simple as loading a simple
SHP file straight off a USB thumb drive. All the driver had to do
was stay in the shaded area, and to avoid the orange shaded "no go"
areas.
Plus, by connecting the logging lead to a contact switch that
only activated when the toolbar was adequately buried in the
ground, it meant the auditing process was as simple as periodically
downloading the map file onto a USB thumb drive and looking at it
on a PC.