"Operators of agricultural equipment can have difficulty viewing directly behind the machine, where most mirrors are ineffective," said Shawn Ehlers, webinar presenter and doctoral student in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University. "This is especially true for operators with visual impairments and those with range-of-motion limitations who have difficulty turning their bodies. The lack of visual lines of sight is especially problematic on larger self-propelled equipment where the operator station is enclosed or isolated from the equipment."
Ehlers, of southeastern Indiana where he is the sixth generation of his family's grain farming operation, has worked as a mid-range mechanical development intern engineer at Cummins Engines in Columbus, Indiana; an instructor at Ivy Tech Community College in Lafayette; and a teaching and research assistant at Purdue. His current research focuses on agricultural safety and the implementation of assistive viewing technology.
Registration, with a deadline of July 21, is available online at https://purdue.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_e3fwtBxpAQQZmv3. Instructions for accessing the session will be sent to registrants by July 22.
For more information, contact AgrAbility at 800-825-4264 or by email at agrability@agrability.org.
AgrAbility is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and consists of a national project, led by the Breaking New Ground Resource Center at Purdue, and state/regional projects serving 22 states.
Source: Purdue University