Bosch has revealed timings for the market launch of Nevonex, an innovative, open, manufacturer-independent digital ecosystem for agriculture. Making farmers daily work easier and helping to increase yields, the Nevonex ecosystem provides a technical infrastructure through which various providers of agricultural technology, resources or services, can offer useful functions and tools for connecting and automating equipment and workflows, all along the entire agricultural process chain.
“With Nevonex we bring together important players in agriculture with their know-how and thereby make the farmer’s daily work easier and help to increase yields”, explains Andrew Allen, responsible for Commercial Vehicles and Off-road at Robert Bosch gmbh.
Bosch has developed Nevonex specifically for agricultural applications and will operate the ecosystem. There is no need buy new equipment, as the operating system can be easily retrofitted in an existing control unit. Offered in selected regions in Europe in early 2020, including the UK, farmers can select an individual package of digital services.
Higher yields and optimised operating processes, less use of resources while protecting the environment: modern IT solutions and the internet of things (lot) enable farmers to save time, increase yields and reduce costs by automating and connecting machinery and workflows.
In actual practice, however, the potential of smart, digital agriculture is currently not always being exploited because the digital services available right now are usually offered as stand-alone solutions. In addition, these services are often incompatible with each other and thus offer only limited benefits.
“We designed Nevonex right from the start as an open solution available to all manufacturers of agricultural machinery, sensors and control units as well as to developers of features. As a result, users benefit from a growing variety of features and compatible devices along the entire value-added chain from tilling the land to sowing, fertilising, crop protection and harvesting. This gives our users the flexibility to choose between the individual offers, put together a tailor-made package and adapt it to their current requirements at any time,” explains Andrew Allen.
Providing seamless interaction in agriculture
Founding Nevonex is another important building block in Bosch’s corporate strategy to advance digitisation in agriculture. The core of Nevonex are the application softwares, which are called Features (in the Nevonex ecosystem). Every ecosystem partner can access Nevonex’s technical infrastructure and user-friendly cloud-based development tools to develop Features. These FEATURES can be implemented directly via cloud on the farmer’s machines.
Nevonex’s unique technical approach, combined with interface access to a wide range of agricultural machinery, brings the benefits of smart digital agriculture to farmers and all ecosystem partners faster and easier than ever before. In addition, access to data from existing or retrofitted compatible sensors on the agricultural machine leads to further potential for optimisation. The live sensor data allows the system to take the current conditions in the field into account and thus achieve higher yields or reduced costs through the more precise distribution of, for example, seeds, fertilisers and crop protection.
It is also possible to run several Features on one machine at the same time. Depending on the FEATURE, information is output via terminal devices as smartphones or tablets. The direct transmission of this data to the farmer’s farm management system can also be a real time-saver.
The Features work both online and offline in the field. When the system is used offline, the data can be quickly and easily updated via Wi-Fi in the farmyard. Highest safety standards consider the fact that the farmer’s farm data is highly sensitive so that it is protected from unauthorised access at all times. In doing so, agricultural businesses can make their fleet equipment and vehicles “smart” and benefit from the smooth cooperation between the connected devices.
Thanks to the simple, direct implementation of the Features on the machine and the automatic data transfer, many of the operating steps, such as the use of flash drives, are no longer necessary.
The control unit can be quickly and easily retrofitted and registered by an authorised partner on existing agricultural machinery. Together with its partners, Nevonex has set up a comprehensive service concept to answer all the questions that might arise. This includes the installation service and individual support for operation in the field.
Nevonex will first be offered in selected regions in Europe in spring 2020, including the UK, followed by its market launch in North and Latin America. Currently, there are already eight active partners on board who offer high-quality features, interfaces to their agricultural machinery, compatible sensors, the Nevonex-enabled control unit and installation services.
Nevonex was awarded the *Agritechnica Innovation Award 2019 in silver, by an independent expert commission appointed by the German Agriculture Society. Interested visitors will find Nevonex at Agritechnica held at the Hannover Messe from 10-16th November 2019 in Pavilion 11, Booth C10. Together with the eight active partners, Nevonex will be presenting its offer for the first time.
