AGRITECHNICA ELECTRONICS
B&R
Autonomous agriculture November 10-16, 2019
B&R
Hall 15, Stand H11
WHILE THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FARMERS AND THEIR EQUIPMENT WILL CONTINUE,
THE MACHINES OUT ON THE FIELD WILL BE HANDLING MUCH OF THE WORK ON THEIR OWN
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iVTInternational.com September 2019
By 2050, the world’s population will reach around
nine billion people and one thing they all have
in common is that they all must eat. That presents
a substantial challenge for the agricultural industry.
Farmers need to get more yield from fewer acres, while
at the same time struggling to find sufficient skilled
labor. The answer is autonomous equipment. Even the
most skilled tractor jockey is no match for a machine’s
tireless precision. Autonomous agricultural equipment
delivers centimeter-level accuracy for hours on end and
that’s exactly what’s needed on the farm of the future.
Losses in potato crop can be avoided by sowing
them precisely in the middle of a mound of soil. An
autonomous machine can be programmed to ensure
that every single potato in the entire field is planted
exactly right. Not only that, but the machine does
it quickly and never stops for breaks.
Conserve resources
In addition to their extreme precision, autonomous
agricultural equipment also has benefits in terms of
resource utilization. Fertilizers and pesticides can be
targeted directly at the crop, as opposed to blanket
application over the entire field.
Stefan Taxer, B&R’s product manager for mobile
automation, comments, “This approach helps farmers
boost their yield while also keeping their costs down,
since each plant gets exactly the dose it needs.
Autonomous equipment is an answer to the shortage
of skilled labor in agriculture.”
It is also a relief for the environment. Time and
labor-intensive tasks like plowing and weeding are also
prime candidates for machines to handle. Machines also
save workers from strenuous and monotonous tasks.
Data collection and evaluation
For farming equipment to perform all this work
autonomously, it must collect data from a variety of
sensors and be able to process that data. Standard
control systems like those used to automate production
machinery are not enough. Big gains in productivity
can be attained through big data analytics.
Give an autonomous tractor access to data from
weather stations, for example, and it can determine
when conditions will be best to perform a given task. If
changes in the weather pose a problem, and it can stop
automatically and pick right back up again when the
situation improves.
PC for mobile machinery
To provide the processing power needed for analytics
and running autonomous processes, B&R offers a
ABOVE: The PC is designed
to perform in harsh conditions
specially designed PC for mobile machinery. The PC has
an Intel processor with a wide range of scalability, from
Celeron to Core i7. Intel technology delivers high
performance with low power consumption for optimal
energy efficiency.
The PC is specially designed to perform in harsh
environments. With IP69K protection, it can be used in
a temperature range of -40°C to +85°C. The completely
enclosed housing doesn’t have a fan and is highly
resistant to shock and vibration. A specially designed
temperature management solution protects the
processor from overheating, while also ensuring
that it works flawlessly in cold temperatures.
“You won’t find another product on the mobile
equipment market that offers this kind of processing
power and modularity in compact PC form,” notes Taxer.
Sharing data between machines
For machines to form a network and communicate
with each other, they must exchange data. A combine
harvester with a tractor and trailer following alongside
it, for example, can keep track of the tractor’s speed and
steering data in order to make optimal use of the
available loading space while also minimizing seed
waste. The machines use special protocols to talk to
each other.
B&R offers the widely used protocols MQTT and
AMQP. They allow data packets to be transferred reliably,
even in cases where the network connection has
low bandwidth or is intermittently unavailable.
“From hardware to software to a uniform, open
communication standard, with B&R as a technology
partner, today’s most advanced smart farming practices
are within easy reach,” adds Taxer.
From field to cloud
The data collected by autonomous equipment can
provide a wealth of information through appropriate
analysis. Comparing the yield from multiple harvesters,
for example, can help identify potential for optimization
in the way future crops are sown or fertilized. In such
a scenario, the B&R PC serves as an edge controller,
allowing the machine to send data to a cloud.
An edge controller is a device used to collect large
volumes of data from a variety of machines. It compresses
and aggregates the data and prepares it for cloud storage.
Predictive maintenance
The data collected by the PC can also be shared with
other systems for remote maintenance and predictive
maintenance. B&R offers a pre-installed, pre-configured
package that makes implementing predictive
maintenance more straightforward than ever. This
makes it possible to predict and schedule machine
maintenance requirements and substantially boost
their availability. iVT
By Carola Schwankner, corporate communications
editor, B&R
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