Topics of the joint seminar

Innovation and product design
Innovation processes are challenging because of demanding design requirements due to hard environmental conditions, seasonal work, user skills and ergonomic constraints. User-Centered or User-Driven innovation methods could be more used to improve the design. State of art in the Northern Europé.

Biorefinery and energy production
Reclamation of valuable products from agricultural residues such as proteins,  bioplastics, biogas, bioethanol and incineration technologies.

Robotics, sensors and Precision Agriculture
Agricultural robotics and intelligent machines. Use of laser scanners and other sensors in practical use and AE research. Imaging. State of art of precision agriculture and expected use for the next 10 years. Mission planning and route optimization. Parallel tracking and controlled traffic farming. GIS mapping and VRA technology.

Data communications between agricultural systems
Open standards and interoperability for data exchange between systems like machines and management systems involving geo-spatial data infrastructures, data services accessible via standardized inter-faces and formats, web-services, ISOBUS and development of network information model.

Farm management information systems
Data acquisition and information processing, decision support for operations optimization, data integration, distributed information management (cloud, Internet-of-things, etc.), advanced data acquisition on machines, integration with management systems.

Operation management and optimization
Resource usage, energy requirement, planning tools for machine dimensioning, scheduling and routing, planning and logistics in the supply chain, user-driven design of information’s system, information modeling, system analyses and sustainability analyses.

Indoor mechanization
Last updates within indoor mechanization with focus on usage of robotic technique.

Advisory and consulting services
Advisory service level within AE in our countries and how to benefit and increase the quality in near future? Advisory services are especially invited to contribute.

Education
Education level within AE and our countries today. How to benefit and increase the quality in near future? Scientific people from universities and university colleges are especially invited to contribute.

Soil compaction
Soil protection and Machine Soil interaction. Modelling of soil compaction. Machinery to reduce soil compaction. Decision support systems to predict and minimize soil compaction.

Plant protection machinery
The sprayer manufacturers meet new challenges for technical developments. Advanced technical solutions are expected or hoped for but also have to be on a realistic economical level for the market-(s). The Machinery Directive and the Safe Use Directive (SUD) has put new demands and challenges on sprayer manufacturers and sprayer operators.

Sprayers with high technological performances and capacities are put on the market, with solutions to increase environmental safety, precision in application and minimizing losses as well as increased comfort for the operator. Sprayer inspection is to be implemented in all Europe on all kinds of equipment, this put demands on administration processes, testing equipment and control methods. Drift reducing technologies is introduced in many countries as a means to get plant protection products approved and to reduce sizes of buffer zones. Challenges to get them used by operators who may fear reduced efficacy of treatments.

Spray records are demanded by regulations and traceability contracts. Highly technical automatic solutions are under development.

Post harvest and logistics
Handling of biomass for storage, logistics for transport of biomass from site of harvesting to storage or processing facility, technology/sensors for monitoring storage over time, type of transport, quality of stored biomass.

Ergonomics & safety
Occupational safety and health situation in farms. Ergonomics of work needs to be considered as a changing issue since agricultural work includes more and more information handling, monitoring of system performance and service. Use of external manpower and foreign workers challenge the working environment in the ever growing farms. This also has an effect on product development in agricultural engineering.

Energy efficiency
Improved energy efficiency in machinery and systems, energy efficiency measurements, effects of indirect energy inputs, farms self-supplying in energy, future technologies.

Environmental aspects and Climate neutral farming
Climate neutral farming, lowered machinery emissions, lowered system emissions, clean technologies, improved methodology for environmental evaluation