New agri-machinery innovations pick up awards ahead of Agritechnica
Krone ExactUnload picked up a silver medal.
Despite being delayed several months due to the continuing Covid-19 crisis, the world’s biggest farm machinery show, Agritechnica’s, traditional medals for new innovations have been awarded.
Originally scheduled for November 2021 in Hanover, Germany, the biennial show has now been postponed to February 27-March 5, 2022.
As new Covid-19 regulations continue to roll out, the German organisers, DLG, hope Agritechnica can go ahead on its new dates, which are not pleasing everyone in the machinery world.
Agritechnica normally attracts 2,800 exhibitors and over 486,000 visitors to the Exhibition Centre but some of the main exhibitors are concerned about the new dates in 2022.
Major exhibitors John Deere and JCB have already confirmed they are not exhibiting at Agritechnica in 2022 citing bad timing as the main reason.
John Deere said that farmers will be in the fields working at the show’s scheduled dates and that will affect visitor attendance figures.
Other manufacturers are yet to show their hands and say they are watching the evolving Covid-19 news carefully and will make their final decisions on attending in due course.
German company NeXaT GmbH won the DLG Gold Medal award for its unique NeXaT, which is a carrier vehicle that can carry all implements needed for tillage work.
This saves time and money when comparing to travelling to fields each time with a tractor and implement, but is essentially designed for larger arable farmers.
With the 12m version, the system is designed such that 95% of the total field area is never driven on in the envisaged bed mode, resulting in high yield potentials with good soil and environmental protection.
The NeXaT is designed as an autonomous working machine and is equipped with a peripheral monitoring system.
A cab that can be rotated by 270° is available for process monitoring. This establishes the basis for fully automated machine operation and enables manual vehicle guidance during transport.
The integrated implements are mounted between the four large, electrically driven track running gear units, which can be rotated by 90° for travelling by road.
At present, power is supplied by two independent diesel engines, each offering an output of 400 kW/545 hp, with generators. The vehicle is designed for alternative drive technologies such as fuel cells.
With the integrated NexCo combine harvester module, the NeXaT achieves grain throughputs of 130 to 200 tonnes per hour for the first time. The innovative dual axial flow concept uses a 5.8m long axial rotor mounted transverse to the direction of travel.
The flow of harvested material is introduced centrally into the rotor and at a tangent to achieve energy efficiency.
The rotor divides it into two material flows. This enables roughly twice the threshing performance of conventional machines and establishes the prerequisite for uniform straw and chaff distribution with two choppers, even with a cutting width of 14 metres.
Grain delivery is ensured by a 32 cubic metre grain bunker, as a result of which the combine harvester unit does not require a transfer vehicle on normal-length fields.
Transfer to the transport vehicle can take place on the headland with an unloading capacity of 600 litres per second.
In total there were 16 winners of silver medals including Krone’s new smart technology, ExactUnload, that helps unload silage wagons more accurately and evenly.
With ExactUnload unloading, the new Krone GX roller belt wagon with the front wall running to the rear is controlled so that the transported material can be distributed evenly over a previously defined distance.
In this process, the speed at which the tractor and trailer are moving within the speed window (up to 3.5kph) is irrelevant.
This ensures that even inexperienced drivers can always achieve good distribution and the compaction vehicles have less material to redistribute, thus contributing to more uniform compaction and therefore to a high silage quality.
In addition, fuel and time savings are achieved, the material is loosened less due to the wheel slip of the distribution vehicle and additional capacity is obtained for quality-relevant compaction.
Continental won silver for its Agro ContiSeal which is a clever system that seals punctures on tyres when they hit a nail or other sharp object, normally in the midst of harvest time.
Due to the size and the weight of the machines and tyres and as a result of the ensuing time and performance losses during the short sowing and harvesting seasons, changing a tyre on the field leads to significant delays in production.
Agro ContiSeal provides a viscous polymer on the inner side of agricultural tyres that seals the leak in the event that the tread is penetrated by foreign bodies.
Despite the damage, the vehicle can continue to be driven and the tyre can be repaired or exchanged later on.
Planungsburo Heinrich won silver for its Photoheyler weeding machine that detects weeds with cameras.
By using its rotor concept technology, this enables area performances of over one hectare per hour to be weeded.
The Photoheyler row guidance function reliably detects crop rows with the aid of the cameras. The machine's sensor wheels can be steered using hydraulic cylinders and are synchronised with those of the tractor, meaning that they mirror their movements.
The hoeing machine is therefore guided extremely precisely along the rows and the previous difficulties involved in controlling the machine and the tractor at the same time are resolved with the Photoheyler.
Since the hoeing machine is firmly mounted on the tractor, the driver retains control at all times and laborious manual adjustment of the hoeing implement using a joystick is not required.
By oversteering the tractor wheels on a lateral slope, the Photoheyler keeps the vehicle combination on course even on a gradient. The crops are not buried since the rotor is positioned obliquely and the vehicle speed is therefore compensated for.
As a result of this, the rotor always cuts at an angle of precisely 90° to the crop, whereby the weeds are cut out from the crop row and placed between two rows, after which they are again unrooted or buried by the trailing tools.
Another interesting robotic tool, the RoboVeg Robotti for harvesting broccoli, picked up silver for a joint venture between Agro Intelligence ApS in Denmark and RoboVeg Ltd.
Helping solve the labour shortage in vegetable farming, the RoboVeg Robotti robot operates with two engines that deliver a total output of 104 kW, with 40 kW of this output can be tapped off at the power take-off shaft.
The RoboVeg is equipped with high-resolution 2D cameras and 3D sensors, and the lifting mechanism has a lifting power of 750kgs. Two robot arms that can be swivelled around six axes undertake autonomous broccoli harvesting.
A robot arm requires approximately three seconds from selecting the broccoli on the field to putting it down.
Its harvesting performance is around 2,400 units per hour, whereas performances of only around 300-360 units per hour and per worker are achieved in manual harvesting.
While autonomous robots are already available and used for sowing, weed control and harrowing, automating harvesting has not proved possible until now.
The RoboVeg Robotti is the first autonomous system for harvesting broccoli and therefore contributes to significantly improving productivity.
During the Covid-19 era machinery, manufacturers have been operating in 'go-slow mode' with staff off on furlough hurting production.
With no events to promote their new developments, it is positive to see some of the new technology is recognised in the DLG Agritechnica medal awards.
Although awards for new smart tech software are on the list, it seems farmers rather want to see new hardware being launched.
All eyes now are on the main exhibitors at Agritechnica to see if they will attend the event - or indeed if it will go ahead at all.
