Automatic instrument for measuring soil penetration resistance

In modern agriculture, the knowledge of the soil properties is a key factor for profitability in the production. However, data acquisition and processing are limiting factors for its use, since they require specialized labor. The automatic instrument that provides information about soil penetration resistance, which is described here replaces the traditional system and automatically obtain reliable data with higher resolution. The necessary data is measured with sensors that obtain the applied power by the motor on the ground instead of load cells as in commercial systems. The distances between measurements points are calculated automatically using the geometry of the mapped area. The developed methodology provides visual model for the layout of the output data using charts where the color gradient indicates the soil compaction related to the depth.