Review
ISO 11783-compatible industrial sensor and control systems and related research: A review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2019.104863Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Innovative systems enhance the performance of Precision Farming technologies.

  • ISO 11783-compatible sensor and control systems is a rapidly expanding sector.

  • Research efforts involve guidance and control, acquisition and transfer, and analytics.

  • Autonomous navigation, safety, and plant protection systems are identified gaps.

  • Limited bandwidth, standard expansion, and digital twins are future challenges.

Abstract

It has been more than 20 years that the ISO 11783 (commonly designated as ISOBUS) was formed and now it is the widely used standard in agricultural machinery communication. As over the last years the industry is actively promoting ISOBUS, a number of sensor and control system appeared that are ISOBUS-compatible. These systems are focused on two main areas: (i) decision-making, where the sensors are usually mounted on the tractor and aim at varying the applied dose rates (seeds, fertilizer, etc.), and (ii) process monitoring, where they are mounted on the implement and monitor (and in some cases control) the proper application of the recommended dose rates. The aim of this review was to investigate the offered sensor and control systems and categorize them based on the performed application in order to better contextualize their importance. The relevant benefits by using them, but also the potential technical constraints based on their measuring elements were identified. The academic advances could not be missing from this review as all these years many researchers conducted ISOBUS-related research. The related publications were initially identified and later categorized from an operation-based perspective into three main research areas: (a) guidance and control, (b) data acquisition and transfer, and (c) data management and analytics. The scientific advances that are described give an insight into what should be expected in the following years in terms of commercially available solutions. Identified gaps and future challenges related to ISOBUS conclude this review providing, thus, expected future technical innovations but also potential research directions.

Introduction

The need to standardize data transfer among agricultural machinery was identified early in the 80 s and an initial concept was introduced by Jahns and Speckmann (1984). The first standard was developed and published in Germany by the working group of LAV (Landmaschinen und Ackerschlepper Vereinigung, Agricultural Machinery and Tractor Association) (Auernhammer, 1989). It was designated as LBS (Landwirtschaftliches BUS-System - Agricultural BUS-System) and was based on DIN 9684 and on the Controller Area Network (CAN) by BOSCH using the data protocol V2.0A (11-bit message identifier).

The advances in LBS gradually led to the formation of the ISO 11783 (commonly designated as ISOBUS) in 1998 (ISO, 1998) with the overarching aim to provide an open, interconnected system for onboard electronic systems. The main objective was to enable electronic control units (ECUs) to communicate with each other, by providing a standardized system (ISO, 2017). The main difference between ISOBUS and its predecessor (LBS) was the length of the identifiers that preceded each message (Speckmann and Jahns, 1999). While the LBS was based on an 11-bit message identifier, the version 2.0B extended frames of ISOBUS contained a 29-bit identifier which allowed over 229–1 message identifiers (Robert Bosch GmbH, 1991).

From the early stages of LBS, and later ISOBUS, many researchers started to examine the offered capabilities but also to explore new opportunities that were arising by leveraging the obtained machine communication data (Auernhammer et al., 2000, Hofstee and Goense, 1999, Spangler et al., 2001). The importance of exchanging machine-collected data in a standardized manner for precision farming (PF) was also highlighted by Stafford (2000). Other researches, regarded transferring of machine field data to a farm office as a substantial aspect towards improving operation efficiency but also for documentation and reporting purposes (Cox, 2002).

The industry has also been very active in integrating ISOBUS into new machinery but also enhancing it with new functionalities. The Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation1 (AEF), which was founded in 2008, has the main goal to promote the agricultural electronic standardization. It consists of eight manufacturers and three associations who are working as core members together with 200 general members, to promote ISOBUS and also coordinate the conformance tests in order for a product to acquire ISOBUS-compatibility certification. Identifying the capabilities of ISOBUS, third-party providers, which are neither tractor nor implement manufacturers, have started developing sensor systems that are ISOBUS-compatible offering an enhanced performance of agricultural machinery. This has a profound impact on PF, where sensor data are valuable towards performing site-specific applications.

The aim of this review is two-fold: The first is to provide an overview of the industrial sensor and control systems that are ISOBUS-compatible and have a substantial contribution on PF but at the same time are also very promising in promoting new research approaches. In this case, the objective is to identify systems that are compatible with ISO 11783 standard and not sensors or sensors systems that are connected to the ECU of the implement or the tractor ECU (TECU) via a proprietary connection. The classification of the reviewed sensor and control systems should follow an operation-wise structure to better contextualize the benefits of each use. The second direction of this review is to identify as many as possible research papers that have ISOBUS enhancement as the main topic and to give details on the technical implementation and possible challenges. It should be stated that this review will not expand to sensor and control systems or research papers that have or discuss an interface to CAN-Bus as our main aim is to describe “only” ISOBUS-compatible solutions. It is also essential, after reviewing the developed solutions, to identify possible gaps and future challenges that need to be addressed.

Section snippets

ISOBUS-compatible sensor and control systems

The ISOBUS-compatible sensor and control systems were categorized into three operation-based main areas: (a) tillage and sowing, (b) fertilization and plant protection, and (c) yield monitoring. For the former two, the focus is on PF applications and mainly on sensing and controlling for variable rate applications (VRA). Two sub-groups could be mentioned here: systems for (i) decision-making, and (ii) process monitoring. Fig. 1 presents a general overview of these two groups that apply to both

ISO 11783-related research

The three main areas that were identified in terms of ISOBUS-related research are: (a) guidance and control, (b) data acquisition and transfer, and (c) data management and analytics. Fig. 2 presents a general framework on how these three areas are interconnected. The first level involves the utilized machinery for infield applications. Here researchers focused on performing real-time control of tractors, implements and combine harvesters. This is also the layer where all ISOBUS data are being

Discussion

From both reviewed areas, i.e. industrial and academic, it becomes clear that ISOBUS has penetrated to a significant extent into everyday farming-related operations. Starting from tillage and sowing until harvesting, but also reaching up to more abstract systems related to data analytics, ISOBUS provides a basis for the farmers, and the machines that they utilize, to operate based on well-informed decisions. The last years, new sensor and control systems appear at an increasing pace, indicating

Conclusions

In this review, we tried to give an overview of the available ISOBUS-compatible sensor and control systems and present the benefits and limitations that they have from an application-related perspective. The number of systems is increasing at a high pace and in fact, this was one of the main challenges in forming this work. We expect a substantial number of sensor and control systems to appear in the following years as more companies are interested to offer plug-and-play solutions for a

Acknowledgement

This work was funded by the ICT-AGRI ERA-NET projects ifarma-ffa and iFAROS and was financially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) through the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE), grant numbers 2815ERA01H and 2817ERA09H.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest. Reference to commercial names or products in this work is solely for the purpose of providing information and does not represent an endorsement or otherwise by the authors or their organization.

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