




Affordable sensors







‘Smart’ developments




Across the hitch





GPS enters




Future smarts

So how much smarter will implements get? “Hard to say,” says Ben Craker, marketing specialist with AGCO Corporation's Advanced Technology Solutions. “I'm sure autonomous [robotic] vehicles are just over the horizon. These would be very smart implements.”

Engineers are working on wireless transfer of data from implements. “All data will be logged and wirelessly transmitted to the home computer for analysis and record keeping in farm management software that allows the user to make variable-rate maps and keep track of input costs and profit per square foot of a field,” Craker adds.

In the meantime, he says, many of the features currently available as an option (such as implement steering and automatic point-row shutoff) will become standard equipment.

Stone says, “Perhaps the ultimate goal would be to build farming systems that allow farmers to focus their efforts on tasks they enjoy and let the machines handle the tedium.”

Timeline to intelligence


Controllers with computers are used to automate tying and wrapping of bales with the introduction of the Vermeer large round baler. Mechanical and hydraulic controls power simple implement functions.


Advent of serial communications that simplify data transfer, allowing hundreds of signals to be sent across the hitch over a single pair of wires. Sensors, controllers and tiny computers now talk back and forth across an electronic cable called a “bus.”


CANbus (Controller Area Network) protocol developed for the auto industry allows computers to work together in a network. Ag equipment manufacturers using CANbus now have implements that are controlled by a tractor's computer terminal.


Vehicle-based nitrogen sensing and regulating equipment is developed. This precision application technology receives information, such as the greenness of the leaves, on the go and immediately varies the nitrogen application rate.


GPS emerges and companies start to tie machine control functions to geographical coordinates. This marks the beginning of a new product category called precision farming where positioning information from satellites is integrated with field information like yield and pest pressures.


GPS-based guidance and steering become available on tractors, creating a new wave of technology that at first assists with steering and then takes over steering functions using computer controls. The Fendt Vario terminal is first shown on 700/800 and 900 series tractors.


Precision farming equipment takes off as manufacturers make automated guidance easy to use, more accurate and affordable. Guidance becomes a factory-installed feature.


Fendt launches a headland management system (HMS) through the Variotronic terminal. If the Fendt HMS was not the first true headland management system in the industry, it was certainly a more advanced version.


The Vario TMS generation of 700/800/900 tractors is introduced. (TMS stands for Tractor Management System, which includes Teach-In HMS.) When the Fendt tractors started offering the Teach-In system controlled by the Vario terminal, they started having full HMS as we think of it today — memorizing and automating hitch, PTO, remote valves actuation, throttle changes and so on.


AGCO/Massey/Challenger introduces a headland management system that automates all end-row functions.


Machinery manufacturers adopt ISOBUS electronic standards. The standards allow any brand of implement and tractor to work together and exchange information across the hitch.


Implement steering is developed. GPS is added to the implement to steer it on the same line as the tractor pulling it. This leads to a resurgence of farming practices like strip-till and controlled traffic, which require precise implement steering.


Deere introduces the industry's first headland management system that incorporates satellite-assisted steering to provide an auto-turn capability.