Seamless interoperability between farm machines and software is a step closer
London, March 1, 2018
The Internet of Things (IoT) has great potential to increase the efficiency of agriculture. Currently, products from different manufacturers do not speak the same language and therefore cannot exchange information, thereby limiting their value. If, for example, the data collected by a combine harvester cannot be read by the farm’s computer system, it is of no value in terms of supporting their management decisions. The companies and organizations listed above have teamed up to work together on the Internet of Food and Farm 2020 Project to overcome this problem and design the future of connectivity in agriculture.
Using the ADAPT framework, the partners have demonstrated how data can be exchanged between agricultural equipment and software platforms from different brands in a standardized format. This is an important enabler for the flow of data required to make “digital farming” or “Agriculture 4.0” a success. With a simple software plug-in, software companies and equipment manufacturers will be able to read data from different sources, drastically reducing development time while at the same time increasing available data streams. Easier data exchange will ultimately lead to improved decision making and more productive farming.
ADAPT is an open source software toolkit from AgGateway, based on a universal data model that enables translation between different proprietary data formats. The proof of concept has been demonstrated today, March 1, at the IoF2020 stakeholder event in Almeria, Spain.
With this demonstration, the partners confirm their commitment to an open and interoperable system, where data can flow seamlessly between different value chain participants. For farmers, it will be possible to use different types and brands of equipment with a wide variety of software or services, regardless of manufacturer.
The next step in the process of increased interoperability includes real time and bi-directional vehicle-cloud communication. For this, the team will build on existing standards and work together with the AEF, the Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation.
The AEF is an independent organization with more than 200 member companies. The main goal is to improve cross-manufacturer compatibility of electronic and electric components in agricultural equipment, and to establish transparency about compatibility issues.
--Note to editors--
IoF2020 fosters the large-scale uptake of IoT technologies in the European food and farming sector. With €30-million co-funded by the EU, the project has the potential to drastically improve the sustainability and productivity of the European farming and food sector, while demonstrating the added value of smart webs of the connected objects in 19 use cases, covering 5 trials (e.g. arable crop, dairy, meat, vegetables and fruits) throughout Europe. More information can be found on https://www.iof2020.eu/.