Voice-driven fleet management system for agricultural operations

Food consumption is constantly increasing at global scale.In this light,agricultural production also needs to increase in order to satisfy the relevant demand for agricultural products.However,due to by environmental and biological factors(e.g.soil compaction)the weight and size of the machinery cannot be further physically optimized.Thus,only marginal improvements are possible to increase equipment effectiveness.On the contrary,late technological advances in ICT provide the ground for significant improvements in agriproduction efficiency.In this work,the V-Agrifleet tool is presented and demonstrated.VAgrifleet is developed to provide a “hands-free”interface for information exchange and an “Olympic view”to all coordinated users,giving them the ability for decentralized decision-making.The proposed tool can be used by the end-users(e.g.farmers,contractors,farm associations,agri-products storage and processing facilities,etc.)order to optimize task and time management.The visualized documentation of the fleet performance provides valuable information for the evaluation management level giving the opportunity for improvements in the planning of next operations.Its vendorindependent architecture,voice-driven interaction,context awareness functionalities and operation planning support constitute V-Agrifleet application a highly innovative agricultural machinery operational aiding system.

Digitalization of mine operations:Scenarios to benefit in real-time truck dispatching

One of the key factors in a profitable open-pit mine is the efficiency of the waste disposal system. Using GPS-technology, the truck-dispatching decisions can be made in real-time but the chosen strategy has a crucial role. Therefore, finding the optimal dispatching strategy for truck-shovel operations is extremely important. Dispatching strategies have been reported in the literature, but the comparison of these strategies is still missing. This paper illustrates the differences between the strategies by conducting a stochastic simulation study based on the data gathered from an actual mine. The findings underline the importance of the global vision in dispatching decisions.

Real Time Vehicle Status Monitoring under Moving Conditions Using a Low Power IoT System

In the era of the Internet of Things(IoT),the ever-increasing number of devices connected to the IoT networks also increases the energy consumption on the edge.This is prohibitive since the devices living on the edge are generally resource constrained devices in terms of energy consumption and computational power.Thus,trying to tackle this issue,in this paper,a fully automated end-to-end IoT system for real time monitoring of the status of a moving vehicle is proposed.The IoT system consists mainly of three components:(1)the ultra-lowpower consumptionWireless SensorNode(WSN),(2)the IoT gateway and(3)the IoT platform.In this scope,a selfpoweredWSN having ultra-low energy consumption(less than 10 mJ),which can be produced by environmental harvesting systems,is developed.WSN is used for collecting sensors’measurements from the vehicle and transmitting them to the IoT gateway,by exploiting a low energy communication protocol(i.e.,BLE).A powerful IoT gateway gathers the sensors’measurements,harmonizes,stores temporary and transmits them wirelessly,to a backend server(i.e.,LTE).And finally,the IoT platform,which in essence is a web application user interface(UI),used mainly for almost real time visualization of sensors’measurements,but also for sending alerts and control signals to enable actuators,installed in the vehicle near to the sensors field.The proposed system is scalable and it can be adopted for monitoring a large number of vehicles,thus providing a fully automatic IoT solution for vehicle fleet management.Moreover,it can be extended for simultaneous monitoring of additional parameters,supporting other low energy communication protocols and producing various kinds of alerts and control signals.

Identification and Characterization of Métiers in Multi-Species Artisanal Fisheries. A Case Study in Northwest Spain

Artisanal fisheries are characterized by using a vast array of different fishing gears and target species. Such heterogeneity has traditionally complicated their management and the availability of accurate data on fishing effort and incomes. This study identifies and characterizes the métiers currently used by an artisanal fishing fleet based in a coastal Atlantic region in South-Europe (Asturias, Northwest Spain), by applying an integrated method of analysis which combines administrative data on fishing licenses, daily sales statistics and information from surveys. As a result, 21 artisanal fishing métiers have been identified, with special relevance of the trammel net (targeting Lophius spp.), the Merluccius longline and the Merluccius gillnet métiers. Spatio-temporal patterns of fishing effort have been also described, and outputs and inputs demands per métier have been quantified. It has been also found a high degree of alternation between different métiers during the fishing season and significant differences in terms of technical aspects and workforce. Finally, fishermen’s short- and long-term strategies (métier choice) are discussed, different comparisons are made on the basis of other South-European studies and main findings are linked to artisanal fisheries management.