Automatic control of farming operations based on spatial web services

A task controller commanding ISOBUS sprayer and using external spatial data.WFS and WMS as a decision support during a task execution.Outlined dynamic application task for precision farming.Farm machinery standardisation and FMIS software components need adjustment. Field operations relating to arable farming are often very data intensive tasks. An increasing number of regulations have been set to ensure food safety and environmental aspects. Also, the number of tools for the best practice management applied in precision agriculture is growing. However, there are yet no standardized, automated methods for a compliance management used in situations where circumstances change and are dependent on the specific location. Therefore compliance checks during the work progress online or on demand are difficult to achieve and the temporal accuracy can be very poor. In this work, we have developed a task controller (TC) prototype with an ISOBUS-compatible process data messages to be able to utilize multiple external services such as WFS (Web Feature Service) during a spraying operation. The WFS was set up in Germany to provide geodata while the actual task execution was performed in Finland. We developed a possibility to use and integrate external data from different sources in the TC on the tractor. Methods presented in this article serve as the basis for the development of multiple tools that can be used for improving farming system development, the environmental risk reduction of agricultural production and compliance checks. Existing information sources such as on board sensors, weather and forecast information, disease pressure, spatial environmental risks and real time remote sensing can be combined for new solutions of this kind. The development of technical standards for the seamless data exchange in the agricultural domain is therefore crucial. In this work, we are focussing on spatial data exchange between heterogeneous IT systems as a component of on-field machinery used in precision management.