MAKING TURF MATTER
www.turfmatters.co.uk
LINE MARKING
A base for expansion C
ountrywide Grounds Maintenance Ltd Wiltshire has used the Turf Tank One to expand their line marking services into new sports whilst lightening the load on their staff. Adrian Sargent, Regional Manager at Countrywide Grounds Maintenance Ltd Wiltshire, operates with a team of 14 covering most aspects of grounds maintenance, with one person taking responsibility for line marking. In recent times, customers’ requirements have become more technical with bespoke athletics markings and requests for other sports such as lacrosse and baseball. Adrian turned to autonomous line marking technology to facilitate these requests, focusing on a robot that uses a base station. The Turf Tank One combines the best of all the recent advancements by using battery power and a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver coupled with a real-time kinetic base station, which significantly increases the accuracy. Base stations are commonly used in agriculture and surveying due to their precision. Other methods, such as GNSS with GPS used in smartphones, have accuracy
that makes them suitable for applications like Google Maps, but they lack the accuracy needed for initial marking or overmarking. An RTK base station improves the accuracy of the robot (rover) by providing it with real-time correction data accurate to +/- 1 centimetre. This means a GPS receiver capable of RTK takes in the normal signals from the GNSS along with a correction stream to achieve 1cm positional accuracy. Knowing that the Turf Tank One could deliver this quality was integral to Adrian’s decision. “We’ve had various requests for bespoke line marking and with one person taking responsibility for all the marking, we wanted to lighten his load but not sacrifice on the quality. So, for us, that was the primary thing, and before we looked at what the market had to offer, I’d already decided I wanted a robot that came with a base station,” said Adrian. “For me, it’s essential if you want to achieve the accuracy and consistency we need, and there were no other manufacturers out there that could match it. So, we tested the Turf Tank, and the performance was excellent. The speed was what we were told, pitches were
marked out quickly, and the reduction of paint usage was also in line with what we expected. “Currently, we’re using it to mark two schools a day, and that’s the initial setups for a 300m six-lane oval and rounders pitches, followed by a 400m six-lane oval and rounders, but we are looking to increase this to three in the next season. “Come September, we will be marking, football, rugby, hockey, and schools are also looking at more unusual sports and because of the versatility of the robot, we can cater for that.” n www.turftank.com
TURF MATTERS | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2021 | 59
