Implement Pose Device

Team Name: Trimble Before Us
Sponsor: Trimble

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Imagine you’re towing something behind your car and need to back up. As soon as you start backing up, if you’re towing using a hitch that allows for any rotation (as most do), you can no longer assume the object you’re towing will move in the same direction as your vehicle. On farms, tractors tow implements that perform tasks such as tilling or planting seeds. Knowing how a towed implement is oriented relative to a tractor can help a driver or an autonomous driving system back up and make sharp turns safely. In collaboration with Trimble, we have developed a non-mechanical system called the Implement Pose Device that accurately reports the relative angle (yaw) between a tractor and its towed implement in real time using computer vision and an infrared marker tree.