Patent ID: 8763937

Claim:
An irrigation system comprising: a central pivot; a series of mobile towers connected to the central pivot and to one another by support structure, each mobile tower having wheels and a motor for driving at least one of the wheels; and a control system for maintaining alignment of the mobile towers, the control system comprising— a location-determining component for determining a position or orientation of each of the mobile towers; and a computing device operable to detect mis-alignment of the mobile towers based on the position or orientation of each of the mobile towers, determine a hierarchy of decreasing mis-alignment of all of the mobile towers and a degree of mis-alignment based on the position or orientation of each of the mobile towers, determine a control sequence to re-align the mobile towers based on the hierarchy send commands to at least one of the motors for implementing the control sequence, and instruct the motors to realign the mobile towers, an order of activation of each motor being a function of a rank of the respective mobile tower in the hierarchy and a speed and a duration of operation of each motor being a function of the degree of mis-alignment of the respective mobile tower, the commands including a signal representative of the speed and the duration of the respective motor, wherein the computing device is operable to shut down the irrigation system and send a notification to an operator if the mis-alignment of the mobile towers is outside safe operating parameters.