Citation:
Sven Peets, Abdul Mounem Mouazen, Kim Blackburn, Boyan Kuang, Jens Wiebensohn, Methods and procedures for automatic collection and management of data acquired
from on-the-go sensors with application to on-the-go soil sensors, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, Volume 81, February 2012, Pages 104–112.
Abstract:
Sensors for on-the-go collection of data on soil and crop have become essential
for successful implementation of precision agriculture. This paper analyses the
potentials and develops general procedures for onthe- go data acquisition of
soil sensors. The methods and procedures used to manage data with respect to a
farm management information system (FMIS) are described. The current data
communication standard for tractors and machinery in agriculture is ISO 11783,
which is rather well established and has gained market acceptance. However,
there are a significant number of non-ISO 11783 compliant sensors in practice.
Thus, two concepts are proposed. The first concept is on-the-go data collection
based on ISO 11783, which mostly covers data on parameters related to tractor
and machine performance, e.g. speed, draught, fuel consumption, etc. Process
data from sensors with Control Area Network (CAN) interfaces is converted into
ISO 11783 XML and then imported into relational database at FMIS using RelaXML
tool. There is also the export function from database to task controller (TC) to
provide task management, as described in ISO 11783:10. The second concept is on-
the-go data collection with non-ISO 11783 sensors. This data is likely to be
recorded in many formats, which require an import service. An import service is
based on local or public sharing or semantic mapping outputting a common format
for FMIS (e.g. AgroXML). Import is best performed as close to the generation of
sensor data as possible to maximise the availability of metadata. A case study
of sensor based variable rate fertilisation (VRF) has been undertaken focussing
on German fertilisation rules.
