Trends in the Automation of Agricultural Field Machinery

Trends in the evolution and development of agricultural field machinery are often shaped by the technological development in other sectors of the world’s economy such as defense and transportation. For example, without defense-related concerns over locating troop movements or guiding ordinates, it is doubtful that the civilian sector alone would have provided enough justification for space-based radio navigation or Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). Similarly, the truck, bus and automotive industries have contributed significantly to the deployment of micro-controllers in the off-road equipment sectors. Perhaps the single greatest factor in the adoption and deployment of microcontrollers is controller area networks (CAN), enabling the integrated control of multiple machine functions.