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Instantaneous Accuracy of Cotton Yield Monitors

Calvin Perry, George Vellidis, Natasha Wells, Rodney Hill, Andrew Knowlton, Eugene Hart, and Dewayne Dales

ABSTRACT

One of the first questions potential yield monitor users ask is “What is the accuracy of the system?” The trick is to understand how accuracy is defined. Instantaneous accuracy is the accuracy of each yield data point which is difficult to measure. Load accuracy is the accuracy over a basket load of cotton. Field accuracy or field error is the accuracy over an entire field. Field accuracy is most commonly used by sales people when discussing a yield monitor because it is usually the smallest number of the three. This occurs because over an entire field, measurement errors average themselves out. In a study to evaluate the instantaneous accuracy of cotton yield monitors, we bagged and weighed cotton passing by three commercially available cotton yield monitors for 3, 5, and 7 second intervals which corresponded to 15.6, 26.0, and 36.4 ft of travel, respectively. We then compared the weights of the bagged cotton to the yield recorded by the yield monitors for that same interval. We found that instantaneous accuracy was not affected by yield or by the 3 harvest intervals we selected. Accuracy errors ranged from 0% (remarkable) to 40%. In general, most yield monitor readings were within 15% of the bagged weights.





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Document last modified 04/27/04