Sensors improve combine safety

摘要

SELF-PROPELLED HARVESTING machinery has been found to be a major source of accidents to operators all over the world. It is typically noisy and very powerful, and an entrapped operator is unlikely to be heard This inherent danger remains despite the increased levels of comfort and hazard protection now built in by most combine manufacturers around the world. A survey of power-driven machinery-related accidents conducted in the UK in 1988 found that, at 16 per cent of all incidents reported, combine harvesters came second only to mechanised potato harvesters (25 per cent) in terms of all accidents related to mechanical guarding issues. It found that many of these accidents resulted from the operator failing to disconnect the drive to the machine before making necessary adjustments to it, or trying to clear a blockage It also found that grain-tank discharge and levelling augers caused more accidents than any other part of these complex machines - nearly half of all incidents reoorted.