Connectivity A Conversation with NEVONEX's Micha Muenzenmay
Advances in connectivity — and interconnectivity — are critical to the adoption and more-fully realized potential of agricultural technology. Dr. Micha Muenzenmay is a director of systems engineering for commercial vehicles and off-highway applications at Robert Bosch and CTO of NEVONEX, a digital machine service platform. We asked Muenzenmay, with his background in electronic control, automation, driver assistance, electronic control units and connectivity, to share his perspectives on how connectivity is currently being used in ag tech and how it will affect farming in the future.
Over the last four or five years, connectivity has really made a big step forward. If you look at it from a system perspective, connectivity has moved forward with cloud application programming interfaces (APIs). This not only enables simple data transfers, but also makes data and abilities of assets, like machines, available to the cloud community, so that everybody that wants to do development can do so.
We've also seen implementation of standardized data exchange across machines. This is happening in the United States with AgGateway, and in parallel in Europe with Agrirouter. It’s great that these two initiatives are happening between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
There is also a lot of progress with regards to intelligent machines, cloud technology, and modern algorithms, such as artificial intelligence or process chain optimization, that have laid a beautiful foundation for innovation in our industry.
The ag tech industry is a quite an interesting industry. There is a lot of investment that has been taking place over the years to lay out a huge foundation of technology. Connectivity, interoperability, and easily accessible ecosystems are the missing link as they will make value creation happen.
I can speak for Europe, and especially for Germany, by saying that connectivity is not always a given. Even if we mount the best antennas and have the best 4G LTE, a machine needs to be up and running all the time. If we cannot ensure that the process is working 100% reliably, it really can make or break a season for farmers.
By incentivizing our growers, working together within the industry, and involving governments for the next 10-15 years, we can ensure that seamless connectivity will be available in the field.
But right now, we’re not there yet. In cities, reception is typically good, but if you go to rural areas where our value is generated, connectivity gets interrupted. Interoperability needs to be a seamless and reliable, so the grower can trust and rely on it.
Another problem I see is that we are at the rising time of what I call Smart Agriculture, which is the next evolutionary step of digital agriculture, and basically means that the backend and the machine are starting to meld. This hasn't happened yet, so at the moment, we're still fighting for downloading wireless data and uploading data. That's still an issue.
Where I work, we would like to interlink process chains. We would like to interlink agronomic knowledge from leading ag players with functionalities of great machines, thus delivering value added novel services to benefit growers.
Connectivity needs to be looked at as more than just sending and receiving data — and that hasn't happened yet on a broader scale. But there is pressure for instance in Canada or in Europe to provide stronger documentation and monitoring. There I see that we as the ag tech community need to place a stronger focus in the future.
I wouldn't like to mention the big word of disruption, but it really will be something different.
With the rollout of 5G and industry-wide digitalization efforts, a lot of innovation will happen. This will support faster data transfer, which I see as the need in high-end application. In addition, low-latency communication allows better machine autonomy. And not to forget, we can even more strongly benefit from on-machine edge computing.
We will also see a much stronger interconnectivity between the cloud and the processes on the machine. We see a lot of baby steps happening. All the backend technologies that require data and services will have a much better and more seamless interlink with the machines.
There is also cybersecurity. Agriculture is an extremely critical infrastructure as we need to feed the people in the world. Therefore, agriculture will also be at risk of cyberattacks. In the next three to five years, I can see the industry doing tremendous work to create more secure solutions.
And in three to five years, we will also see a lot of new business models and connectivity services. Unfortunately, all these new business models play on the turf of data. Growers handing over data might provide their competitors with insights regarding how profitable they are, so they may be reluctant to share the data.
But it also benefits growers: They will be part of the data community and can subscribe and use better and value-added services that improves their operations, efficiency, and farming practices. The farmer should have the free choice in what digital service he consumes and with whom he wants to share his data.
So as an industry, in the next three to five years, we will have solved the problem and come up with technology that brings value to the farmer, and protects the interests of the farmer, so he can keep his data private.
