Mobile Internet Services for Online Support of Agricultural Machinery

Liisa Pesonen MTT Agrifood Research Finland

NORUnetAgro project10.04.2008

NordunetAgro 2006-09

Participants:

University of Aarhus, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Dep. of Agroecology and Environment (Leader, prof. IverThysen)Alexandra Institute Ltd. Danish Agricultural Advisory ServiceLund Institute of TechnologyMTT Agrifood Research FinlandProAgria, FinlandUniversity of Aarhus, Department of Computer ScienceSwedish Institute of Agricultural and Environmental EngineeringUniversity of Aarhus, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Agricultural Engineering

Background

• Agricultural processes are diverse of kind

• Several production processes and their sub-processes are run parallel most of the time

• Actual work in farms consists of parallel and successive tasks

• In the Nordic Countries the number of farms has been degreasing and the size of the farms increasing

• Fewer workers run larger business and automation is increasingly employed

Realization

GIS

Data collection

Planning

GPS

Farm

Server

Service

Expert systems

Industry

Production system

Background

• Demands towards the quality and traceability of production methods and produced raw materials are increasing

• Demands are set by governments, processing industry and customers

• Demands concern compliance with standards, environment,

ethics and health

Information management in field work

• Information management plays important role in how well farms are able to deal with this all

• Task execution in fields with agricultural machinery has a key role in process data acquisition and documentation in plant production

• Task execution is carried out following the plan, – sudden changes in plan

-> has to follow standards and regulations and help to improve the outcome

Information management in field work

• Project focus is on technology that enables online support of agricultural machinery

• Field machinery is mobile

-> data and information transfer between machine and external support source has to be wireless

• Internet serves a media to create connections from an individual machine to several support providers, among them other machines.

Online Support

• Presentation of accomplished work online to driver, drivers of other machines, farm manager, remote service

• Presentation may contain location and timing, sensor data from field environment and automation system, as well as of this data processed information of quantity and quality of applied inputs and work

• Using this data and integrating it with external data, it is possible to create new supportive information for the machines and drivers

• Data analysis and computing may take place according to automated protocols, but also manual inputs and personal advising interventions may be needed due to diverse of the tasks and their content

Information management in field work

Dispersed calculation • On-board computing

– data from the system itself and from external sources– automatic action or driver’s involvement in decision

making loop• External computing

– data from the system is sent to external computing service unit, supporting information is sent back to system

– automatic action or driver’s involvement in decision making loop

• In complex decisions both techniques merged

Information management in field work

• There are two technological approaches chosen and further demonstrated within the project– to internet servers connected wireless local area

network– mobile internet

• There are several commercially available technical hardware solutions to build physical systems.

• The challenge is to program the needed data management

system, which covers complex productions chains with interfaces to multiple different applications

• Open, preferably harmonized system interfaces are essential in order to built useful data management systems in this environment

Jakobsen et al 2008

Publish-Subscribe Middlewarefor Online Fleet Management and Precision Agriculture

• On the REDS publish-subscribe system based prototype of the middleware was designed and implemented

• Designed system allows various applications to communicate and transmit data at a high abstraction level– some parts of the applications are hosted on mobile

entities in the neighbourhood – others on a local area network in a building – other on servers somewhere on the Internet

Thomas Jakobsen1), Lars M. Kristensen2),Raphael Dobers2), Claus Aage Grøn Sørensen3), Iver Thysen3)1) Alexandra Institute Ltd2) University of Aarhus, Department of Computer Science,3) University of Aarhus, Inst. for Jordbrugsproduktion og Miljø

Publish-Subscribe Middlewarefor Online Fleet Management and Precision Agriculture

• The prototype middleware includes position awareness and position tracking where, e.g., tractors, harvesters, and personal in a farm building can view the position and routes of mobile entities in the fields

• The system also allows more complex applications to be

built without concern about the low level communication problems related to mobile and hybrid networks

Raimo Nikkilä 2007

Web-based system concept (InfoXT)

• Another approach utilizes mobile internet technology where mobile working unit communicates with centred Internet database via Task Controller (TC) (Nikkilä 2007)

Raimo Nikkilä 2007

Web-based system concept (InfoXT)

Web-based system concept (InfoXT)

• TC is connected with work unit’s ECUs and sensors via cables, wireless connections or CAN bus like ISOBUS

• TC gives commands to work unit – how to perform the task– records sensor data and drivers notes– prepares document of performed work– calculates assisting information from collected data for

the driver

Agrix

Web-based system concept (InfoXT)

• TC has modem via which it receives information like Task files and weather data or other assisting information from the database via web server and sends document data back to the database

• GPRS or 3G connection is used for data transfer

Plan Spraying

XML interface

Data transferXML (e.g.:Isobus-XMLAgroXML, FODM, GML)

Free format

Terminal software (browser)

Target in the field

Data acquisition

EXECUTION

Data acquisition application

Data refining

Site-specific data

Intelli-gence

Task controller TCManual, PDA, Tablet PC, GSM

Stationary sensor networks

Planning software / Service / Advice / Expert system

Storing information and calculation GPRS, mobile broadband

Farm’s own information

Farm

Markets, adv. organisation,

industry

Authorities, research, other

companies, fellows

0 xGt/s

xDSL

Other service providers

(e.g weather)

MANAGEMENT

…

…

TC

Execution

Data acquisition

Planning

Farm

FingMISserver

Services

Industry

Services

Internet

Services

TC

TCMarkets

TC

Information quality

• The quality of online support is on focus in the project

• Reliability and needed accuracy of sensor origin information in different on-board decision levels is investigated and analysed

(Pasi Suomi, MTT/University of Helsinki)

• Also the needed type and accuracy of 3D modelling of accomplished work for online support to driver is detected

(Jere Kaivosoja, MTT/Helsinki University of Technology)

• The results are needed in designing and scaling the structures of practical systems; quality of the sensors and location of the assisting calculation capacity – on-board or behind Internet servers

NORDUnetAgro

• Developlent and demonstration work on the base of two approaches (2006-07) where concern in:– Heterogenity of comunication technologies– User-friendly system– Reliability and needed accuracy of produced support

information

• Project continues with research and demonstrative work where here introduced technologies and research is integrated to form more powerful solutions

liisa.pesonen@mtt.fi

Thanks!

NORDUnetAgro project