TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY OF BRAȘOV BULLETIN OF THE TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY OF BRA ȘOV Proceedings of the IXth International Conference on Product… [601388]

ISSN 2065 -2119

TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY OF BRAȘOV

BULLETIN

OF THE

TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY
OF
BRA ȘOV

Proceedings of the IXth International Conference on
Product Design, Robotics, Advanced Mechanical &
Mechatronic Systems and Innovation – PRASIC
November 10–11, 201 6
BRAȘOV, ROMANIA

VOL. 9 (58) SERIES I, NO. 2 SPECIAL ISSUE – 2016
ISSN 2065 -2119

Published by
Transil vania University Press
Brașov, Romania
2016

Bulletin of the Transilvania Univ ersity of Bra șov • Vol. 9 (58) No. 2 – Special Issue – 2016
Series I: Engineering Sciences

SOME CONCEPTS FOR NEW
TECHNOLOGY
IN PRECISION AGRICULTURE

I. BARBU1 M. LUCULESCU1 L. CRISTEA1
S. ZAMFIRA1

Abstract: Monitoring agriculture cultures , soil, water and the necessary
temperature, all will necessary for the health of the plant. In t hese directions
many new automation solutions in agriculture are being studied and
developed by researchers in the field who often put their questions about the
efficiency and effectiveness with which they operate on existing agricultural
practices. Based on these questions arose from many service opportunities
and agronomic requirements. This paper proposes to list a few concepts
relating to this area of interest for improving agricultural productivity. Some
are new and untested; others were built and test ed by research or traditional
concepts, which were revised in light of new opportunities to improve
technology.

Key words : agriculture, precision, technology, mechaniz ation ,
management .

1 Centre “Advanced Research on Mechatronics ”, Transilvania Unive rsity of Bra șov. 1. Introduction

The development of precision farming
technologie s in the 1990s opened up a new
way of thinking about mechanization for
crop care. It introduced a number of
concepts, which although not new, brought
about a shift in the thinking and
management of variability. With yield
mapping and VRT (Variable Rate
Treatments) the spatial scale of variability
could be practically assessed and treated
for the first time since mechani sation was
first used. Pre precision farming, managers
assumed that spatial and temporal
variability existed but did not have the
ability or tools to deal with it. Since then
we have seen the scale of management and hence treatments reduce from farm -scale,
down to field -scale, through to sub -field
scale with varying expectations and
benefits. This technology trend has
continued to the point wh ere we now have
many smart controllers that allow the scale
of treatment to be reduced further, down to
the plant and even leaf scale. In doing so,
these new methods of introducing smart
controllers and automation have enabled
the development of new concep ts of
practical crop management that were not
feasible before. We now have levels of
automation where we can consider the
methods people used before large -scale
machinery was introduced and see if these
same methods can be utilized today using
small smart machines .[1]

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Bra șov • Vol. 9 (58), No. 2 – Special Issue – 2016
28
2. New Concepts for Technology in
Agriculture

Many new concepts are being developed to
allow agricultural automation to flourish
and deliver its full potential. In some
respects this needs a paradigm shift away
from how we have done these t asks in the
past to how we could do them using SSM
(small smart machines). The current trend
of machinery development is incremental
where each new machine is a little better
than the one before. This is a successful
approach but one that ignores radical
alternatives and opportunities. Take size
for example. We have seen the continued
increase in size and work rates of
agricultural machines over the years,
which to a large extent, can be highly
beneficial as more work can be done by a
reduced labor force, h ence giving
increased economy of scale but it also has
a detrimental effect on the ability to deal
with spatial and temporal variability .
Many machines have been retrofitted with
VRT controllers to help deal with this.
An alternative approach can be take n by
extending the vision to the point where the
machine can work by itself, without
constant human supervision. But if this radical scenario is to be fully
developed it should take into account not
only current problems but also identify
potential opportu nities. By taking this
approach we can redefine the basic
agronomic plant needs irrespective of the
current machinery constraints and develop
new SSMs that meet these needs alongside
environmental care and economic
prudence, health and safety, work
directi ves and societal impacts, i.e. we start
with a blank sheet and design the system of
machines we need currently and those for
the future.
To take full advantage of these
technologies, we should not just consider
the implication of developing a new single
technology but should look at the wider
issues of a complete mechanization
system, including appropriate machinery
management. To do this we have to
consider all the impacts and implications
but in doing so we need to define some of
the systemic concepts th at underlie the
designs. This is not intended to be a recipe
for developing new system but an
explanation of some of the new concepts
encountered.

Fig. 1 . How system environment affects agricultural robotics [1]

BARBU . I. et al.: Some Concepts for New Technology in Precision Agriculture 29
When taking a systema tic view of
agricultural robotics, we can see there are
many factors that will affect the final
designs. Figure 1 shows a first attempt to
define the numerous interactions.
The system in question is the
mechanized support for growing crops
which is increas ingly becoming more
automated and may lead to a system of
agricultural robots.
There would appear to be two sets of
concepts developing: those that apply to
the whole system (systemic) and those that
describe the parts of the system
(systematic). The next section describes
new (and not so new) concepts from both
perspectives.
2.1. Systemic concepts

These concepts deal with overarching
ideas that impact the whole mechanization
sector.
Phytotechnology : This word was first used
in this context by Shibusawa [5], to
describe machines that were better suited
to dealing with individual plants. Tillett
and Hague [6], developed a similar
conceptual approach called plant -scale
husbandry in their weed spraying robot.
This concept takes the emphasis away
from the mach ine and work rates and
focuses directly on plant needs – to
develop an autonomous machine that can
tend and care for each individual plant
according to its needs.

Fig. 2. Agricultural energy flows [1]

Bulletin of the Transilvania Univ ersity of Bra șov • Vol. 9 (58) No. 2 – Special Issue – 2016
Series I: Engineering Sciences
Intelligently Targeted Inputs (ITI) :
Current mach ines do not usually use
sensors or control systems to regulate what
happens during field operations. They tend
to use blanket treatments and in many
cases it is quite difficult to achieve the
desired levels of accuracy.
Zero draft force is another strange concept
to many. We know that draft force is an
important part of the way in which
machines, particularly tractors, impart their
energy to the soil in a horizontal manner.
This is why tractors have large back
wheels and heavy front weights. Many
soil-engag ing operations can be made draft
force neutral or have a significantly
reduced draft force requirement.
Zero compaction is the ability to carry out
field operations without compacting soil,
thus negating the requirement for more
energy to reinstate soil s tructure. After
lengthy consideration it now seems strange
to run machines on top of the growing
media and damage the soil that is there to
grow plants – not support tractors.
Energetic autonomy is the ability of a
machine to get its motive energy from it s
surroundings rather than from an imported
energy source. The concept has been
successfully trilled, [4] and could be
extended to include SSMs running a hybrid
system of batteries and an engine run on
biofuel grown and processed on -farm
Usability is an im portant concept in the
design and introduction of any new
technology. In Precision Farming we (the
scientists and engineers) made agriculture
too complex for most farmers by
introducing endless maps of differing soil
and crop properties, without developing a
clear method to use them for their own
purposes.
Modularity should be incorporated at all
levels of design from system architecture
and software, right up to logistics and
packaging. Given that a system has been
modularized , when one module fails or needs to be changed, it is a simple matter
to remove one ‘black box ’ and replace it
with another.
Task oriented Automatic Sub Systems
(TASS) are modular end effectors that fit
to a mobile platform, much like a
traditional implement attaches to a
standard tra ctor. They should be designed
specifically to interact with crop or soil
using mechatronic principles and the
concepts described here.
Cropping systems : Given that these SSMs
exist, a number of new opportunities open
up in terms of how we actually grow cr ops.
At the moment we traditionally (in Europe)
grow a single crop once a year which
seems a little simplistic .
Phased -cropping is another concept where
the same or multiple crops can be planted
in different phases through the year.
Instead of planting all the crop at the same
time and running the risk of a weather
event ruining the whole crop (frost during
flowering, rain at harvest) the crop could
be planted at three different times: one
third planted early, one third planted at the
conventional time, one third planted late
Flexible bio production is the concept of
changing crop and or treatments according
to changing situations. Given we have
individual plant operations that can be
easily changed by management software, a
rolling cropping system of multip le crops
being planted and harvested at di fferent
times can be envisaged.
Establishment can be where all of the
agronomic conditions for the seed and the
soil can be met in a reduced number of
operations, i.e. do the minimum required to
establish the young crop plant.
Selective harvesting mimics the human
approach of just choosing those parts of
the crop that meet criteria such as ripeness,
color , size, etc. At the moment we harvest
the whole crop when it is ready ‘on
average ’ but we know that there is a l ot of
spatial and temporal variability that cannot

BARBU . I. et al.: Some Concepts for New Technology in Precision Agriculture 31
be managed. This mixed product is then
sent off the farm for grading and
processing where a significant value is
added to the product.
Weather dependence is the concept of a
SSM being active only in suita ble weather
conditions. At present if a manned sprayer
is working and the wind becomes too high
the operation may be postponed for the day
or until perhaps the following morning .
Weather independence is where a SSM
could continue working when a larger
mann ed tractor is halted by conditions.
Most cereals in northern Europe are
planted in the autumn both to establish the
crop early and because manned tractors
cannot go into the fields when soil is wet
as it would cause signif icant damage to
soil structure.
Safety and reliability in any technology
should be paramount but more so as
machines become more autonomous. They
should be safe towards the crop, safe to
itself and m ost importantly safe to others.
Graceful degradation is the process where
the machine is self-aware and knows that
parts of the machine are working sub –
optimally or have failed. It could then
adopt a degraded functionality but keep
working until repaired, or navigate itself
back to base for attention.
Machine intelligence : “Our definition of
intelligence is so anthropocentric as to be
next to useless for anything else ” (Samuel
Butler, [2]. No machine can ever be really
intelligent as ‘intelligence ’ is defined by
being an aspect of humanity. Without
biology we cannot have emotion and
without emot ion, we cannot have
intelligence.
Robotic behaviours : An autonomous
machine should be able to carry out a
range of well-defined field operations,
such as seeding and weeding, which are
made up from tasks that exhibit predefined
behaviours , [3]. These exte rnal behaviours
can be made up of a mixture of pre-defined deterministic tasks and real -time reactive
behaviours. The choice of appropriate
behaviour is made by identifying a trigger
and the context of the situation.

2.2 Systematic concepts

The second p art of this paper deals with
concepts that are systematic in nature as
they deal with issues that cover some
specific parts of the mechanization system.
Traditional tillage uses a lot of energy,
much of which is not necessary.
Micro tillage is the concept of reducing
energy and soil disturbance to the
minimum to give the required structure.
Instead of inverting the whole topsoil, as is
done with current ploughing, we now have
the ability to till soil in a small area to
create a suitable interface between s eed
and soil.
Ultra -high precision seeding (UHPS) is
the concept of putting individual seeds
specifically where we want them to go –
both vertically and horizontally. Most
crops are grown in rows as this is easier to
achieve with simple machines. The
individual crop plant and hence overall
crop does better when each plant has equal
access to light, water and nutrients
Permanent planting positions are now
also a reality. The seeding position could
be the same each year especially if micro
tillage were being used. The same seed
application map could be used as well as
subsequent treatment maps. Crop residues
and non-competitive weeds could be
tolerated in areas away from the crop
plants if they did not cause problems, and
residual nutrients are still in the c orrect
place for next year ’s crop to use.
Automated Crop Scouting (ACS) can give
a significant advantage as firstly it gives
the manager access to unparalleled data
from the crop and secondly can give real
time alerts to unusual conditions and

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Bra șov • Vol. 9 (58), No. 2 – Special Issue – 2016
32
stress. This data can be stored as maps for
future review if required.
Proximity fertilization is the concept of
applying fertilizer to the soil at a desired
distance from the crop plant. As many of
the traditional mixes of conventional
fertilizer will burn a crop pla nt if exposed
to a too concentrated amount, the same
mixture could be applied at a controlled
distance from the plant to allow a slow
release and hence have a higher utilization
rate.
Advanced Machinery Management
System (AMMIS) is the concept of
bringing together all the management tools
required to manage a fleet of SSMs into
one integrated software package. Many of
these tools and concepts apply to both
manned and unmanned vehicle fleets.
Fleet management is a set of tools that
allow the coordination of multiple
machines, not only in their current task,
but it also deals with their support and
coordination in real time.
Real time coordination is the concept of
integrating movement of multiple
machines to make best use of their
resources and minimize their down time. A
simple example might be where there are
two harvesters and three trailers. Which
trailer should go to which harvester?
Where should it wait?

1. Conclusion
Agricultural automation is a continual
development. The current research
technologies g ive rise to the possibility of
developing a completely new
mechanisation system to support the
cropping system based on small smart
machines. This system replaces blanket
energy over application with intelligently
targeted inputs thus reducing the cost of
the inputs while increasing the level of
care. This can improve the economics of crop production as well as having less
environmental impact.

Acknowledgement
This paper was realized within the
Partnerships Programme in priority
domains -PN-II, which runs w ith the
financial support of MECS -UEFISCDI,
Project no. PN -II-PTPCCA – 2013 -4-1629

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