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Kubota Working at the Forefront of Precision Farming in Europe

Implements are considered as the first runner in the European upland farming market; Ploughs for tilling, seeders for planting, mowers for cutting grass, balers for compacting hay, sprayers for sprinkling agricultural chemicals, and spreaders for distributing fertilizers, they are just a few of the diverse implements that have been developed for each aspect of upland farming work. In the tractor business, Kubota is a newcomer to the European upland farming market, but its Group implement manufacturer, KVG has long made its presence known in this field. It has earned a high reputation for its engineering expertise not only in Europe, but also in the international market.

At present, Kubota and KVG are working together to reshape the concept of smart farming, and one of these projects is to exchange information between a tractor and an implement for integrated control that achieves higher-efficiency, yet lower-cost farming. Having a tractor and an implement share the operational data, such as driving speed and number of engine revolutions, makes agricultural work more convenient and comfortable. When baling hay, for instance, the driving speed of a tractor and other parameters can be optimized by determining what the tractor needs to do based on the operating conditions of a baler, and having the implement communicating such data to the tractor. In the case of mowers for cutting grass, the operations of the implements are able to optimally be controlled based on the operational route of the tractor in order to avoid mowing the same area twice. Through such “tractors + implements” combinations, Kubota is making even greater efforts to achieve the optimization of farming.

The key to information communications between tractors and implements is an international standard called ISOBUS. Conceived specifically for linking tractors with implements of any brand, ISOBUS is a globally shared communications standard. It was KVG that came up with the idea of ISOBUS, and it played the central role in developing the standard. One of the key individuals responsible for making this happen was Ton van der Voort van der Kley, who is currently Business Development Director at KVG Mechatronics B.V.

“We first embarked on R&D for electronic implements in the beginning of the 1980s,” he noted. “It then occurred to us that we needed a common platform that would allow a smooth connection and exchange of information between the farm machines of customers and those of other brands, and this served as the basis for the development of the ISOBUS international standards. By facilitating dialog between tractors and implements of different brands, ISOBUS offers innovative solutions not only to achieve high efficiency and low costs in farming, but also to make controlling farm machinery easier and more convenient.”

The dedicated efforts of Ton and his team bore fruit in 2008 when the Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation (AEF) was established as an organization to promote the diffusion and expansion of ISOBUS, after which adoption of the standard by the world's leading manufacturers of tractors and implements gathered pace. Peter van der Vlugt, CTO of KVG Mechatronics B.V., currently serves as chair of the AEF.

“The AEF supports the development of ISOBUS-compatible products by providing state-of-the-art software tools and products, with the goal of achieving global diffusion and expansion of ISOBUS. At present, it is being diffused in Europe, North America, and other parts of the world, but we are still dealing compatibility issues in certain markets. I think that the further spread and expansion of ISOBUS is essential for the evolution of precision farming throughout the world.”

For example, rather than working field-byfield, in order to enable even more precise segmentation of one tract of land into smaller fields (i.e., meshing), appropriate fertilizer application and agricultural chemical distribution, irrigation, and other activities, accurate measuring (that is, sensing) is required. Another development project being promoted along with sensing accuracy enhancement is the creation of a tractor that runs automatically on the basis of received information.

“To make a tractor that runs automatically and stably for any job and under any conditions, we need to develop a function that supports automatic operation using the Farm Management Information System (FMIS), which manages data from sensors in an integrated manner. This is one of the research topics that we are working on through close cooperation with KVG.” (Susumu Umemoto, Manager, Electronic Development Office, Vehicle Base Technology Engineering Department)

As one can see, a wide variety of technologies for implementation of smart farming are under development. Let us now take a look at the present state of Kubota's smart farming in the European market.