Proposal of a simplified monitoring approach of environmental performances of farm tractors through a local telemetry network

The TRAKTnet.one project of the Free University of Bolzano aims to identify and develop new solutions to remotely monitor the efficiency of farm-tractors engines included in a local voluntary network all along their lifespan. The knowledge of tractors’ efficiency can give important information concerning machines’ consumption, emissions and need for servicing, thus contributing to a more environmentally-sustainable agriculture. Engines will be monitored by measuring rpms, exhaust gases’ temperature and oxygen content (as indexes indirectly estimating consumption and efficiency) and then analysing and inferring the data through procedures, which algorithms will be an integral part of the project’s results. This implies the existence of a service centre controlling all farm machines and managing a Farm-Information-Systems network through simple logical connections according to a client-server approach. The final outcome of the project is expected to be an automatic system, based on an inference software-engine able to correctly interpreting the sensors outputs. The advantage of this proposal is to exploit a farm monitoring network, previously designed for managing the information related to the automatic compilation of records in the country, by simply equipping data loggers with two additional sensors.