
The Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation (AEF), a global non-profit organization founded to improve cross-manufacturer compatibility in agricultural equipment, will share a look into the future of High Speed ISOBUS (HSI) at the Agricultural Equipment Technology Conference (AETC) at the Omni Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky on Monday, February 10.
ISOBUS, the ISO 11783 standard "nervous system“ of agricultural equipment, seamlessly connects tractors to implements and aftermarket options. HSI will be documented as international standard ISO 23870 and will serve the agricultural, construction and on-road tractor trailer industries, bringing connection speeds up to 4000 times faster. The increased data speed will enable a digital transformation for interconnected systems on heavy vehicles, allowing for automation in fields and on roads.
“HSI will open new opportunities for innovation and serve the industry far into the future, as even more performance and automation are demanded,” said David Smart, Retired Senior Staff Engineer and John Deere Fellow, and an internationally-recognized expert on the ISOBUS communication standard. “This presentation will help attendees understand the details and the big advantages of HSI for high-performance control for vision monitoring of systems, and more.
Smart, along with Norbert Schlingmann, General Manager, AEF, and Ryan Milligan, Deputy Communications and Marketing for AEF and Director at Powell Electronics, will discuss the cross-industry collaboration of the world’s leading heavy equipment manufacturers building ISO 23870, the new High Speed ISOBUS (HSI) standard. They will present information about protocols, middleware for applications, the physical layer, high level objectives and use cases.
Examples of future technologies using HSI will include higher performance command and control at the row level on a large planter or for the individual nozzles on a sprayer; higher performance of user interface to see the exact state of every row in real-time; remote process viewing with more advanced digital cameras replacing the analog of yesteryear; enabling higher levels of automation and more.
“HSI will deliver greater precision for the future, and that precision will help reduce the amounts of fertilizer and chemicals, improve agronomy, and allow companies to offer products that support sustainability,” said Milligan. “The AEF is seeing a more open attitude within the global agricultural industry towards the implementation of future technologies,” said Schlingmann. “There is a great curiosity about the future: to see what the needs will be, and how those needs will be met. Ultimately, that helps to make a better world for the farmers.”
Also scheduled this year is the AEF biannual Plugfest. This year, it is being hosted by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, March 31 – April 3, at the Westin Milwaukee. The event provides an opportunity for precision ag software engineers to temporarily put aside competition and test the interoperability of their ISOBUS products. Over 350 software engineers gathered together in Bologna, Italy in September 2024 to test compatibility and correct communication of their ISOBUS products.