Farm equipment could provide a warning signal to passenger cars to alert drivers to possible risks.
A farmer driving a tractor on a two-lane road, with two wheels off the shoulder while towing a 17.5-foot-wide strip-till machine, came upon a car parked at the side of the road.
He signaled, waited for a beat, and started moving into the left lane to avoid the parked car.
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Unfortunately, he couldn’t see that two cars behind; a passenger car was pulling out to pass both a car and the tractor.
If only there was a way to warn the car driver of danger.
Thanks to new advancements in technology, there is. The Intelligent Transport System and oneM2M combined with Isobus systems to allow the broadcast of a warning message from farm equipment to a nearby vehicle on the road.
The tech is available and frequently used in Europe for equipment to send a warning signal to other motorists. Its availability is limited in the U.S., said Johann Witte, head of advanced development for the company Claas and a volunteer for the Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation, which works on the interoperability of farm equipment of all brands. He is on a committee looking at road safety.
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In this incident, the car passed on the left shoulder, and everything turned out fine after a few tense seconds, but an early warning system would have helped avoid the near-miss.
Speaking of his motivation to study how radio technology could be used in road safety, Witte said, “University research showed the number of accidents between farm equipment and other vehicles was quite low. But when an accident happened, it was bad. If an accident involved ag equipment, more people were killed or injured than in motorcycle accidents."
On-board communication tools can deliver real-time traffic information, react to changing road conditions and warn of danger ahead. To make such on-the-road communications possible, a “safety band” is needed of wireless spectrum reserved for transportation-related communications among the devices that support connected and automated vehicles.
The advantage is that it doesn’t require Wi-Fi and cell towers, which is particularly useful where there is poor rural conductivity, said Andrew Olliver, Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation’s chairman.
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In Europe, where more of useable band is available, there are 1.2 million vehicles on the road with this capability, but few in the U.S.
Volkswagen has already built more than a million cars equipped with radio technology, enabling them to communicate with other similarly equipped vehicles in Europe. There is little safety band available in the U.S., but enough to make it work, Witte said.
Road safety is only part of the efforts of Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation, founded in 2008 by seven agricultural equipment manufacturers and two trade associations to volunteer their time and resources to resolve farmers’ compatibility issues among different brands. The original companies were John Deere, Kubota, CNH, Claas, Agco, Pottinger and Kuhn, and the two associations were the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and the German Engineering Federation.
Today, Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation has grown to include more than 300 ag business-related companies and universities developing communication and interfacing between electronic systems of different ag machinery from independent manufacturers. With interoperability, a grain cart, multiple combines or a variety of agricultural machinery will sense where the other one has been, and where it is going.
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Such communications allow two tractors of different brands working together in a field during planting time to communicate. It also allows for the combine operator to control a grain cart of a different brand to travel at the same speed and unload, Olliver said.
“The strength of AEF is to create a standard of interoperability of farm equipment to benefit farmers, dealers and society,” said Olliver, who is also CNH’s global precision technology partner manager. 
The Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation enhances existing features and works with equipment at different levels of autonomy, allowing them to be controlled by less-skilled operators, Olliver said. The organization is also making information stored in the cloud available in a standardized network usable among manufacturers.
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This interoperability among equipment is not something far off into the future.
“These things are achievable now. They are just around the corner,” Olliver said.
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