EurAgEng is the European Network forEngineering and Systems in the Rural Sector

News from EurAgEngWinter 22016

Aarhus University, Denmarkhosted CIGR AgEng 2016Over 570 agricultural engineers frommore than 50 countries worldwide gath-ered at Aarhus University in Denmarkbetween 26th and 30th June 2016 toexchange research results and informa-tion on Automation, Environment andFood Safety.

A large circus tent was erected on thecampus for attendees to network duringcoffee and lunch breaks when they weretreated to Danish smorgasbord and pas-tries! Papers were presented in specialparallel conferences and seminars as wellas the main sessions on topics rangingfrom structures, plant technologies, post-harvest technologies, energy to informa-tion technologies and controlled trafficfarming.

The conference was hosted by theUniversity of Aarhus partnered by theInternational Commission of Agriculturaland Biosystems Engineering (CIGR), theEuropean Society of AgriculturalEngineers (EurAgEng) and the NordicAssociation of Agricultural Scientists andorganised by the Conference President,Morten dam Rasmussen from AarhusUniversity.

The Conference Dinner, held in the cir-cus tent, with entertainment from tradi-tional Danish musicians and dancers,brought a busy day with many prize win-ners to a very sociable end.

Amongst the EurAgEng winners was DrPaul Miller from the UK who was giventhe prestigious Award of Merit -Scientific Understanding. Once againthis Award has been given to an engineerwho is incredibly enthusiastic about hiswork and an inspiration to all. He is recog-nised as the leading international authorityin the field of chemical application andspraying technology and is the author ofmany refereed scientific and conferencepapers that have helped others understandthe science involved.

The Francis Sevila Young

Professional Award, named in honour ofthe first EurAgEng President, and supportedby Sepp Knüsel Landmaschinen, wasgiven to Professor Álvaro RamírezGómez from the Technical University ofMadrid. His CV reads more like someone oftwice his age with many achievements, publi-cations and research projects to his nameboth within the Spanish community and theinternational community. His expertise lies inunderstanding the handling of bulk solidsincluding the mechanics of granular materials,the behaviour of storage structures such assilos and dust explosions.

The Innovation and DevelopmentAward, for a presentation on an innovativedevelopment with a commercial partner,went to the paper ‘Real time back projectiononto pre-recorded DHM surface of UAV

Networking in the Circus tent

continues over

Award of Merit winner, Dr Paul Millerseen here in the spray droplet test-lab

2 EurAgEng Winter 2016

recorded images with RTK GPS and IMU’ bythe Danish team of Morten S. Laursen, ReneLarsen, Kjeld Jensen and Rasmus N.Jørgensen and the Young Engineers BestPaper Award went to the Spanish team ofElena Sanchis, Salvador Calvet , Elena Galán ,Agustín del Prado and Fernando EstellésBarber from the Universitat Politècnica deValència and the Basque Centre For ClimateChange, with their paper entitled 'Meta-analy-sis of environmental effects on gaseous emis-sions from dairy cattle houses'.

Adam Dubowski from PIMR, Poland, HannuHaapala from Finland, Morten damRasmussen from Aarhus University and SteveParkin, Managing Editor of BiosystemsEngineering, the official journal of EurAgEng,were all commended for the work they dofor EurAgEng with the EurAgEng RecognitionAward.

Three teams of authors collected anOutstanding Paper Award from the edi-tors of Biosystems Engineering.They were cho-sen by the Editorial Board, from a shortlist of10 papers, submitted to BiosystemsEngineering over the last two years.Theywere:

• Eliyahu (Efim) Kelman and Raphael Linkerwith their paper, ‘Vision-based localisationof mature apples in tree images using con-vexity’;

• Stefan Paulus, Henrik Schumann, HeinerKuhlmann, Jens Léon on ‘High-precisionlaser scanning system for capturing 3Dplant architecture and analysing growth ofcereal plants’; and

• Manuel Pérez-Ruíz, David C. Slaughter, FadiA. Fathallah, Chris J. Gliever, Brandon J.Miller with their paper ‘Co-robotic intra-row weed control system’.

Sincere thanks from EurAgEng members andothers attending the conference, go to theorganising team who worked extremely hardto achieve a conference packed with informa-tion.

EurAgEng has future conferences in Paris,immediately before SIMA, on Saturday 25February 2017; Hannover at Land.Technik-AgEng 2017 and AgEng2018 in Wageningen,The Netherlands while CIGR host the 21stWorld Congress in Antalya,Turkey in 2018.

Technical field trip - Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) on large scale vegetable production

The Club of Bologna, was founded in1989, and since then, with activesponsorship of the Italian agriculturalmachinery trade association UNA-COMA, has met regularly withexperts in mechanisation fromaround the world to discuss the stateof agricultural machinery develop-ment, trade and use around theworld.

Many EurAgEng members havebeen, and are, active members of theClub (to which members are invited)and have prepared a variety ofpapers and presentations (availablefor download).

To mark the 25th anniversarymembers got together to produce aspecial volume on the ‘Evolution and

Prospects of the Mechanization inthe World’.This is also availableas a download and after a shorthistory of the Club, there is apart devoted to the role of thetractor in the development ofagricultural mechanization.

Following chapters describeagricultural mechanization inEurope, USA, Latin America,China,Asia and Africa.

This has been a successfulclimax to Luigi Bodria’s spellas President and he has hand-ed over to Paolo Balsari. EurAgEngwishes Paolo a successful spell asPresident.

For agricultural engineers currentlycompleting their PhDs there is the

GiuseppePellizzi Prize - ‘International BestPhD on Agricultural Mechanization’which is worth investigating.Andgood luck.

CClluubb ooff BBoollooggnnaawww.clubofbologna.org

Winter 2016 EurAgEng 3

The Smart AKIS network (www.smart-akis.com) has just moved into the next phaseand is collecting a database, from all aroundEurope, of available Smart Farming solutions.The goal of the Network is to map and dis-seminate relevant existing research results,projects and commercial products that fallwithin ‘Smart Farming Technologies’.

Thus, if you are a provider of SmartFarming solutions, either an established multi-national company, an SME, a start-up or aspin-off, or a research group with promisingnew technologies applicable to the SmartAgriculture field, you can fill in the survey foryour proposal to be included and showcasedon the Smart AKIS ‘Inventory of SmartFarming solutions’.

This call will remain open all through theSmart AKIS project, and a first version of theonline Inventory will be available in 2017 atwww.smart-akis.com

An open call for providers of SmartFarming solutions, research projects andresults is made to voluntarily feed theInventory, through completing the onlinesurvey www.smart-akis.com/index.php/map-ping-of-smart-farming-solutions

EurAgEng is involved as one of the 13 part-ners in this European funded network projectand believes that at this time of rapidly devel-oping technologies for agriculture that such anetwork is an important aspect:• farmers need to know what is available in

order to try it and buy it;• researchers and developers need to be in

the network to see how their technologymeets the farmers' needs; and

• new research results need to be shown tothose organisations and suppliers that willhelp complete development and commer-cialisation!

Smart AKIS is now Mapping SFTs onto theneeds and requirements of farmers inEurope. Smart AKIS will add these SFTs tothe Inventory and bring them to the atten-tion of farmers through a series of network-ing workshops in seven countries as well asthrough the partners providing extension andadvice to farmers and other users.TheInventory will also be available widely (advis-ers, funders, distributors, etc.) through thededicated website.

Why should you take part in themapping?Tech suppliers: established companies, SMEs,start-ups and spin-offs.You can freely adver-tise your productsand solutions to anEU wide audience offarmers, as the SmartFarming Platform willshow links to yourwebsite, productsand to promotionalmaterials.Researchers

You can freely dis-seminate and transferyour research results,projects and papersin Smart Farming ifyou want them to beadopted and testedby practitioners.

All taking part inthe Mapping will be placed in the best posi-tion to take part on the Innovation

Workshops to be held with farmers, whereyou will be able to showcase your solutionsand results and to collaborate on marketuptake or innovation projects.

Technologies are needed to be entered

now and, with others being added in thecoming weeks, the website will be ready forfarmers and their advisers to use from earlynext year.

The Smart AKIS inventory will be a trulyvaluable resource to everyone interested inSmart Farming, as it can be used to learnabout SFTs in all stages of development: fromcurrent research up to commercial availabili-ty.

Don't delay, register today for this freepromotion of your commercial or researchtechnology.Thank you for submitting yourSmart Farming Technologies and I look for-ward to seeing very many technologies onthe website.

Subscribe toSmart AKIS Newsletter on:

www.smart-akis.com/index.php/news Twitter - @smart_akis

Facebook - @SmartFarmingNetworkDavid Tinker secgen@eurageng.eu

Smart AKIS will advertise your agricultural technology product for free!

4 EurAgEng Winter 2016

By PADRAIG BELTON, BBC Technology of Business reporterIn the not-too-distant future, our fields couldbe tilled, sown, tended and harvested entirelyby fleets of co-operating autonomousmachines by land and air.

And they'll be working both day and night.Driverless tractors that can follow pre-

programmed routes are already beingdeployed at large farms around the world.

Drones are buzzing over fields assessingcrop health and soil conditions. Ground sen-sors are monitoring the amount of water andnutrients in the soil, triggering irrigation andfertiliser applications.

And in Japan, the world's first entirelyautomated lettuce farm is due for launchnext year.

The future of farming is automated.

Food shortages, big businessThe World Bank says we'll need to produce50% more food by 2050 if the global popula-tion continues to rise at its current pace.

But the effects of climate change could seecrop yields falling by more than a quarter.

So autonomous tractors, ground-basedsensors, flying drones and enclosed hydro-ponic farms could all help farmers producemore food, more sustainably at lower cost.

No wonder the agricultural robotics sectoris growing so fast.

One report, by US firm WinterGreenResearch, forecasts that the market will growfrom $817m (£655m) in 2013 to $16.3bn

(£13bn) by2020.

But invest-ment bankGoldman Sachsis far more bull-ish, predicting a$240bn marketover the nextfive years.Manufacturersincluding JohnDeere, CNHIndustrial andAGCO are all

fighting to corner the market in driverlesstractors.

As well as big kit, small kit is giving farmersup-to-the-second data on the state of theirfields and produce - what Dr RolandLeidenfrost of Deepfield Robotics calls the“internet of plants and fields”.

Bosch start-up Deepfield, based inGermany, is working to automate the grow-ing and testing of seed crops, tracking thesusceptibility to weeds and drought of differ-ent genetic varieties.

Meanwhile, engineers in Shropshire,England, are trying to show it is now possibleto farm a field without a human setting footin it at all.

The Hands Free Hectare project will useflying drones and automated tractors in thecoming year to grow and harvest a cerealcrop.

Engineers from Harper Adams University -together with a North Yorkshire farmingtechnology company called PrecisionDecisions - are testing prototype machinesnow, and aim to plant their crop in March forharvest in September.

Precision pruningIt's hard to imagine the most traditional ofagricultural sectors - wine making - as need-ing more than natural sunshine and soil. But

In the future, will farmingbe fully automated?

The BBC, autonomous tractors and moreEngineers involved in agriculture, farmers and equipment suppliershave known for very many years that tractors can be fitted withauto-steering systems (and many more aids to performance andprecision farming).

However the ‘rest-of-the-world’ are surprised by how muchtechnology has been helping develop smart farming and what hasbeen happening in agriculture; whether robotic tractors, robotic

milkers, using satellites, and now drones (UAVs), for "mapping"fields, and very much more.

Now the wider population is becoming interested, and aston-ished, at what our profession is developing and the BBC amongmany others is finding it newsworthy. The following was publishedby the BBC on 25 November but note the remark at the very end.The public has concerns about so much robotic automation!tinyurl.com/hxx6ktv

Winter 2016 EurAgEng 5

even here automation is encroaching.Wine makers have used drones to inspect

their vineyards for several years, with high-definition cameras and sensors assessing cropand soil health.

But in France's Burgundy region, a shortageof farm labour has led inventor ChristopheMillot to develop a vine-pruning robot calledWall-Ye.

The latest generation of this trundling four-wheeled robot can make a cut every five sec-onds. It has six cameras - some with infraredsensors - and two arms, and is controlled bya tablet computer inside.

The machine learns as it goes and can trimthe grass around each vine.An onboard solar-powered battery gives 10-12 hours of charge,so with a change of battery, it can work dayand night.

Visual recognition is the biggest challenge,says Mr Millot - knowing where to make thecut.This is actually easier at night, becausethe robot's lights can illuminate the plant, butnot its background.

Next year, he plans to go to California -another major wine-producing area - to mar-ket his range of winery robots there.

Robo lettuceBut some people think farmingland is old hat.

Japanese firm Spread’s auto-mated vegetable factory inKyoto, due to launch nextyear, could produce 30,000 let-tuces a day, the company says.

It stretches up, instead ofacross undulating fields,because "in countries likeJapan, where land is actually avery scarce resource, it makesmore sense to stack your pro-duction, just like a skyscraper," says JJ Price,Spread's global marketing manager.

Everything after seeding will be done bymachines - watering, trimming, harvesting -on shelves stacked from floor to ceiling. It's abit like the solitary drone farmers in the1972 film Silent Running.

Automation has reduced labour costs by50%, says Mr Price.And LED lighting devel-oped specifically for plant cultivation reducesenergy costs by 30%.

"It doesn't matter what the weather or cli-mate is out-side," he says.

And grow-ing vegetablesin verticalfarms meansyou can recy-cle 98% ofthe water,says Mr Price,and producefood muchcloser towhere peopleconsume it,cutting downon transportcosts andemissions.

Drone monitorsBack outside, drones are monitoring cropgrowth rates, spotting disease, and evenspraying crops with pesticides and herbicides.

Now researchers are also trying to makethem co-operate and work in swarms.

If they are mapping weeds in a field, say,“the drones will recruit each other to con-verge on those areas where the weed pres-ence is higher,” says Dr Vito Trianni of theInstitute of Cognitive Sciences andTechnologies in Rome.

Although GPS signals are generally strongin agricultural areas, one challenge for dronesand other farmland robots is coping withpatchy internet and mobile connectivity.

So Dr Trianni's team is using ultra-wide-band radio for his drones to communicatewithout relying on rural 3G or 4G mobileconnections.

Of course, automation might promisemore efficient food production, but it alsothreatens agricultural jobs.

From 1950 to 2010, according to theInternational Labour Organization (ILO), agri-cultural labourers as a percentage of theworkforce declined from 81% to 48.2% indeveloping countries, and from 35% to 4.2%in developed ones.

Robots will surely accelerate this decline.

Engineers inShropshire aretrying to show itis possible tofarm a fieldwithout a humansetting foot in it

The screengrabs in this article are all courtesy of a videofrom Sitmafgr, with EurAgEng’s help, called ‘AgriculturalEquipment - The Sector Of The Future’, which can be viewedat tinyurl.com/zlnagfw

6 EurAgEng Winter 2016

The InnovationsThe SIMA Show in Paris runs from26 Feb-2 Mar and includes theInnovation prize winners. The full listis at https://en.simaonline.com/con-tent/location/241909 from page 21but it is notable that Trelleborg andMichelin took the Gold Awards whileCase IH and New Holland, JCB Agriand John Deere along with Rousseautook the Silver Awards.

Another 14 Innovations were givenSpecial Mentions.

The Conference The day before SIMA starts, Saturday25 February at the exhibition sitethere will be the 1st AXEMA-EurAgEng Conference on ‘Intensiveand environmentally friendly agricul-ture: an opportunity for innovation inmachinery and systems’.

This conference will create anopportunity for exchanges betweenR&D players from industry and thosefrom academic and research sectorsincluding non-agriculture specialists.There will be time included for net-working and the conference languagewill be English.

Full details including the provision-al program are available atwww.eurageng.eu andwww.axema.fr/Evenements.

Registration will soon open and belinked from these sites.

SIMA, Paris

Le Réseau Scientifique et Technique de l’Agroéquipement

Les rendez-vous

Techniques

AXEMA

Field RobotEvent (FRE)

Started in 2003 at Wageningen in2016 it was held during June, atGut Mariaburghausen in Haßfurt,Germany.This was the same site asthe DLG-Feldtage.

Although it seems a long time tothe 2017 event it will be time nowto encourage the student teams todesign the next winning FieldRobot. It is also worth consideringif, like EurAgEng and many others,your company or organisation canhelp sponsor this worthwhileevent and encourage the upcominggeneration of agricultural andbiosystems engineers with multi-disciplinary skills in ICT andRobotics.

Please encourage your localteam or support the FRE organisa-tion and check out the FREProgram Booklet 2016 v5 fordetails of the Robot designs, teamsand tasks.

A competitor at the FRE 2016 coping withmud as well as the competition’s tasks

www.fieldrobot.com

CAD view with engine cover, walkway and coolingunits shown slid forward of the tractor's chassis

Winter 2016 EurAgEng 7

EVENTS

View all forthcoming events online, visit: www.eurageng.eu/events

FEBRUARY 201725 ‘Intensive and environmentally

friendly agriculture: an opportunity for innovation in machinery and systems’ Pre-SIMA one day conference orgaised by AXEMA, Sitmafgr and EurAgEngParc des Expositions de Villepinte, Paris

www.eurageng.eu/sites/eurageng.eu/files/docs/AXM_Conf%C3%A9rence%20_Announcement_2016-09-28.pdf

NOVEMBER 201710-11 Land.Technik AgEng 2017

Hannover Germany

JULY 20188-11 AgEng 2018 Wageningen

www.ageng2018.nl

NOVEMBER 2019Land.Technik AgEng 2019Hannover Germany

JUNE / JULY 2020AgEng 2020 Évora

EURAGENG EVENTS

SPONSORED EVENTS

OTHER EVENTS

FEBRUARY 20177-9 10th Symposium - Fruit, Nut and

Vegetable Production Engineering- FRUTICBerlin, Germanywww.frutic.atb-potsdam.de/en/frutic/welcome.html

12-17 52nd Croatian and 12th International Symposium on AgricultureDubrovnik, Croatiahttp://sa.pfos.hr/index_en.html

21-24 45th Actual Tasks on Agricultural Engineering Opatija, Croatiahttp://atae.agr.hr/

23-25 ICORES 2017 6th International Conference on Operations research and Enterprise SystemsPorto, Portugalhttp://www.icores.org/

JUNE 201713-15 Ciosta 2017 XXXVII CIOSTA &

CIGR Section V ConferencePalermo, Italyhttp://www.ciosta2017.org/

JULY 20175-8 AIIA Biosystems Engineering

addressing the Human Challengesof the 21st CenturyBari, Italywww.cicsud.it/Public/Congressi/File/3announ.pdf

NOVEMBER 201722-24 9th International Scientific

Symposium “Farm Machinery and Processes Management in Sustainable Agriculture”Lublin, Polandhttp://kemiz.up.lublin.pl/

FEBRUARY 201721-22 4th International Engine

CongressBaden-Baden, Germanywww.vdi-wissensforum.de/en/event/nutzfahrzeugmotoren-spezial/

MARCH 201728-29 VDI Smart Farming

Dusseldorf, Germanywww.vdi-wissensforum.de/fileadmin/resources/pro-gramme/12KO100017.pdf?utm_source=PM2&utm_campaign=16P12EM2&utm_medium=email&utm_con-tent=12KO100017

MAY 20179-10 Global Forum for Innovations in

AgricultureUtrecht,The Netherlandswww.gfiaeurope.com

11-13 Biosystems Engineering 2017Tartu Estoniahttp://bse.emu.ee/

JULY 201716-20 11th European Conference on

Precision AgricultureEdinburgh, UKhttps://ecpa.delegate-everything.co.uk/

SEPTEMBER 201718-20 13th Conference: Construction,

Engineering and Environment in Livestock Farming 2017Stuttgart, Germanywww.btu-tagung.de/de/

21-24 HAICTA 2017 Chania, Cretehttp://2017.haicta.gr/

Submission of abstracts 13th March 2017

OCTOBER 201716-18 7th Asian-Australasian

Conference on Precision Agriculture (7ACPA), the 1st Asian-Australasian Conference onPrecision Pasture and Livestock Farming (1ACPLF), and Digital-Farmer 2017 (DF2017)Hamilton New Zealandhttps://forumpoint2.eventsair.com/QuickEventWebsitePortal/7acpa2017/info/

APRIL 201821-22 XIX World Congress of CIGR

Antalya Turkeywww.cigr2018.org

8 EurAgEng Winter 2016

Finally . . .

EurAgEng Newsletter,December 2016Published by European Society of Agricultural EngineersThe Bullock Building,University WayCranfield,Bedford, MK43 0GH, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1234 750876Fax: +44 (0)1234 751319Web: www.eurageng.euEmail: newsletter@eurageng.eu

© 22016 CCopyright iis wwaived ffor ttranslation bbyNational SSocieties iinto oother llanguages. Editor: SSteve GGibbs ISSN 22049-55293

Hopefully thisNewsletter has keptyou interested but weare not receiving arti-cles from members.

We are always look-ing for items thatdescribe unusual proj-ects, equipment, testfacilities and more. Itis costly to collate,print and post theNewsletter to ourmembers and we willdiscuss this at thenext executive meet-ing in March. Shouldwe just share informa-tion via the (new)website and socialmedia? Please let usknow if you havestrong feelings oneway or the other somembers' views canbe taken into consid-eration.Thank you.

It is coming up toChristmas and manyengineers will be look-ing forward to anexcuse to have aninteresting toy!

These youngstershere at the EIMAshow in Bologna per-haps show that JohnDeere could have suc-cessful business sellingtractor simulators!

While farmers in the USA have the chance of getting something even bigger in the shape ofthis TRIBINE (belo)You can check out the videos of the TRIBINE at http://tribine.com/video/ Whatever ‘toy’ you may receive EurAgEng President Claus Sørensen and the Secretariat wishyou all the best for Christmas and interesting and profitable projects for 2017.