The Toro Company

Van Willis Cline

Kathleen Sue Rice

Troy David Carson

A turf management system includes an irrigation system for providing water to the turf at a turf site, and an irrigation evaluation system for evaluating the performance of the irrigation system. The irrigation evaluation system segments the turf site into irrigation management units, where each of the irrigation management units includes at least one sprinkler head. Qualities of the turf are measured to generate collected data points. The data points are used by the irrigation evaluation system to compute a value for the turf in each of the irrigation management units. The values can then be used to identify irrigation management units having common characteristics. The values can be used to define irrigation management zones for controlling the irrigation system.

Turf management

Evaluating ground surface hardness for a site involves using a mobile data collection device to automatically drop an object including an accelerometer onto a ground surface at sample locations spaced at regular intervals within the site. The acceleration of the object is detected with the accelerometer as the object impacts the ground surface at the sample locations. A value is generated representative of ground surface hardness for each of the sample locations. Evaluation using a handheld hardness measurement device is also disclosed.

Evaluation of ground surface hardness

Systems and methods for evaluating individual sprinkler head performance within a turf irrigation system are disclosed.

Growing community of inventors

Saint Paul, MN, United States of America

Van Willis Cline