Vehicle with deck alignment
AssigneeTransform Sr Brands LLC
InventorsKenneth Joseph Dombrowski, Grant Kiel, Brian Todd Reese
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A lawn mowing apparatus may include sensors that are fastened to both its mower deck and its chassis. The sensors may sense a position of the mower deck in relation to the chassis. The sensed position of the mower deck may be presented to the operator via a dashboard display of the lawn tractor or transmitted via a wireless signal to another device. Based on such sensed position, an operator of the lawn tractor may manually adjust the position of the mower deck until the sensed position of the mower deck is within an acceptable operating range. In some embodiments, servomotors may used to adjust the position of the mower deck until the sensed position of the mower deck is within an acceptable range.
Claims18
A method comprising:
- a sensor, coupled to a vehicle, for:
- generating a tilt signal indicative of a tilt of a chassis of the vehicle with respect to a deck of the vehicle;
- generating an inflation signal indicative of at least one tire of the vehicle having improper air pressure;
- in response to detecting the improper air pressure,
- automatically adjusting a tilt reference baseline, used to interpret the tilt signal, prior to generating a deck alignment signal by compensating the tilt signal to remove a tilt component attributable to the improper air pressure,
- determining the deck alignment signal indicative of a recommended realignment of the deck according to the compensated tilt signal and the inflation signal, and
- outputting the deck alignment signal without operator intervention, wherein the tilt reference baseline is adjusted such that the deck alignment signal is generated independent of tilt caused by the improper air pressure.
A sensor comprising:
- circuitry configured to:
- generate a tilt signal indicative of a tilt of a chassis of a vehicle with respect to a deck of the vehicle generate an inflation signal indicative of at least one tire of the vehicle having improper air pressure;
- and
- in response to detecting improper air pressure:
- automatically adjust a tilt reference baseline, used to interpret the tilt signal, prior to generating a deck alignment signal by compensating the tilt signal to remove a tilt component attributable to the improper air pressure,
- determine the deck alignment signal indicative of a recommended realignment of the deck according to the compensated tilt signal and the inflation signal, and
- output the deck alignment signal without operator intervention, wherein the tilt reference baseline is adjusted such that the deck alignment signal is generated independent of tilt caused by the improper air pressure.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.