The intellectualization of agricultural machinery is bringing an agricultural revolution
In the field of agricultural machinery, the intelligent technology makes agricultural machinery experience earth-shaking changes from form to function. Besides UAV, automatic rice seedling transplanting machines and the agricultural machinery operation precise management platform, there are not only individual smart agricultural machinery products, but also the agricultural smart system and platform. As the smart technology influences agricultural machinery and agriculture by various means, a completely new agricultural revolution is being launched.
Smart agricultural machines display their roles
At present, some media have reported the Chinese domestic rice seedling transplanting machines are joining in the rank of intellectualization. It is also reported that the rice seedling transplanting mechanization is the weakest link in the whole mechanization of rice seedling transplanting. Meanwhile, the research is also the tendency focused by the agricultural science field. Moreover, the planting mechanization team of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Nanjing Agricultural Machinery Research Institute uses its current technical accumulations to successfully research the first 33-line large smart pneumatic row-type rice seedling transplanting machine in China and experimented it in the No.4 Machinery Factory, Linhai Farm, Yancheng, Jiangsu Province. It is reported this project was completed under the sponsorship of the special innovation project expenditures of China Academy of Agricultural Science. The successful development and research of this equipment has filled in the technical blank in the domestic large pneumatic smart rice seedling transplanting technology. Shown by materials, this equipment adopts the folding rack, with an operating range of 8 meters, an operating speed of 10 km/h and an operating efficiency between 75 mu/h and 100 mu/h. The seedling operation can be completed by the machine and one person, making it suitable for the requirements on operations in large farms and other scales of planting subjects.
Besides the mechanization of rice seedling transplanting, the large-scale use of tractors in agricultural production also becomes the carrier of intellectualization this year. It is reported that Shangdong and other regions have installed tractors with the Big Dipper Navigation System, which realizes tractors’ automatic adjustment and driving. By applying the Big Dipper Navigation System on agricultural machinery, the straightness error is within ±2.5cm per 100 meters and is more accurate than the GPS system. The Big Dipper Navigation Agricultural Machinery Application System is suitable for the whole land, ditching, ridging, seedling, fertilizing, harvesting and other links.
Besides, intellectualization has spread to the common plant grafting in agricultural production. It is reported that China is the world’s largest facility cultivation country and its agriculture has urgent demands for mechanic plant grafting. The development of the protective land’s vegetable plantation and the fabric greenhouse that have Chinese characteristics and represented by solar greenhouses is particularly fast. The demands from the reality stimulate the fast development of scientific technology. Shown by materials, China Agricultural University started its research on automatic grafting technology at an early time and has successfully researched the automatic cottage grafting method and the automatic rotary cut fitting method, which fill in the blanks of Chinese automatic grafting technology and form the Chinese automation grafting technology with independent intellectual property. By using sensors and computer image processing technology, for example, China has achieved the automatic recognition and judgement of transplanted seedling’s leaves. Meanwhile, the grafting robot can complete the stock and scion’s seedling-picking, seedling-cutting, fixing, seedling row and other transplanting processes. The operator only needs to put the stock and scion on relevant seedling supply platform, and the rest grafting operations can be automatically completed by the machine, thereby improving the operational efficiency and reducing the labor work.
The innovations of intellectualized agriculture are limitless.
Besides the intellectualization of single agricultural products, “smart + agriculture” is forming an agricultural smart system and ecology. In Ningxia’s Lingwu City, for example, the city’s Agricultural Mechanization Promotion Service Center installed the Big Dipper Agricultural Operation Precise Management Platform in seven agricultural cooperatives to accelerate the modern agricultural development and meet the aims and requirements on agricultural mechanization development in the new context. Shown by materials, this system’s main functions include the Big Dipper navigation, the real-time field measurement, the monitoring of agricultural machinery, the area statistics analysis, operating area, quality inspection and the agricultural modulation. The application of this system can master the demonstration zone’s agricultural machinery distribution directly and in time, effectively monitor the agricultural operation’s quality and state, the agricultural hand operations and other information, adopt in-time and effective countermeasures for emergencies, have accurate modulation and centralized hush-harvest and hush seedling planting in crucial agricultural time or before and after natural hazards, improve the agricultural operation efficiency and land utilization rate and effectively solve the problem of agricultural labor shortage.
In fact, a powerful supporting system is needed to be constructed for both the intellectualization agriculture and the agricultural intellectualization. The systematic and ecological construction have attracted the participation of an increasing number of corporates and capital. According to news reports of this March 10th, the smart equipment of the National Agricultural Machinery and Component Exhibition is especially made for harvesting machines by “E-field scientific technology company. By installing the equipment on harvesters, the operator not only realizes the automatic diagnosis, pre-warning and the in-time monitoring of the operating area and the harvest, but also can contact with the service commanding system of agricultural manufacturers through Apps on smart phones, thereby making it convenient for the post-sales service system to check the operating agricultural machine’s position, achieving the allocation and management of service vehicles and guarantee the service’s efficiency and accuracy. Besides, the big-data analysis platform of “E-filed scientific technology” can also make a comprehensive statistical analysis of the operating agricultural machine’s relevant operating data. It can provide agricultural machine factories and governmental departments with the agricultural operation schedule throughout the world and the trans-section operating tendency, thereby providing accurate big-date support for the agricultural production’s scientific and effective organization.
In the innovating direction of “Internet +modern agriculture”, Weifang Luzhong Tractor Co., Ltd is connecting points, lines and faces into a system and further constructing the intellectualized agriculture’s completely new ecology.
The combination of agricultural machinery and agriculture
The intellectualization of agricultural machines continues to accelerate its pace, which will inevitably bring a big revolution to the general ecology of agriculture. It is reported that the Ministry of Science and Technology and other relevant departments listed the smart agricultural machine equipment into the key scientific research projects of prioritized initiation during the 13th Five-year Plan, which involves supporting 11 agricultural machine directions and 49 projects. The estimated supporting capital will reach 2 billion yuan. In 2016, the project initiated the first batch of tasks, which has four supporting directions and 19 projects, including the agricultural machines’ operating informational sensing, the task of applied research on the precise production management control, the task of developing and researching smart agricultural power machinery, the task of developing and researching efficient equipment and technology of harvesting crops, the task of developing and researching efficient equipment of harvesting cash crop and the smart control-technical equipment. In this way, the intellectualization of agricultural machinery is marching forward triumphantly.
However, agricultural machines are becoming increasingly smart and the agricultural production has an increasing reliance on smart machinery and smart systems. Despite of this, controversies have sprung up as to what direction the agriculture is marching forward. There is an opinion: With the intellectualization of agricultural machinery and the agricultural production, it will inevitably overthrow the traditional agricultural production. Besides bringing economic benefits, the traditional agricultural techniques and the excellent agricultural products cultivated by it will no longer exist. In fact, it is also the contradiction faced by the smart agricultural machinery. Seen from the present, the agricultural machinery intellectualization and agricultural intellectualization are marching towards the direction of improving economic benefits and reducing human costs. With the technical process, however, the close combination between agricultural machinery and agricultural intellectualization is the final direction for the intellectual agricultural revolution.