On the 22nd and 23rd of September the AEF Steering Committee held a face to face meeting in the centre of Frankfurt. Apart from the regular monthly teleconferences, the Steering Committee normally meets face to face at least four times per year, but due to the pandemic this was the first face to face meeting of the SC in 21 months ...

The 2021 AEF General Assembly took place in the afternoon of the 23rd of September and, just like the 2020 edition, was another virtual event, the only difference being that most of the Steering Committee members were all attending from the same location.

The AEF Chairperson, Peter van der Vlugt opened the meeting and gave a summary of the AEF activities over the past 12 months as well as some interesting statistics regarding the AEF ISOBUS Database. The AEF vice Chairperson, Andrew Olliver, then spoke about one of the efforts to increase the number of certified products in the AEF DB by attracting new members to the AEF with the reduced membership fee special offer ...

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, no physical AEF Plugfest events could take place. This encouraged the AEF, in cooperation with Vector Informatik, to consider a digital version of the event. After testing several prototypes and organizing two pilot events in April and June 2021, the first official AEF Virtual Plugfest took place between September 21 and 23, 2021.

Using a CAN remote infrastructure, developed by Vector Informatik, the ISOBUS messages are sent from participant to participant via a cloud. The connection is secured by the cloud server and by the exchange of passwords and session IDs among the participants. Thus, even without physical co-presence of both participants, messages can be exchanged between devices at different locations. The resulting latency times challenged the robustness of the devices and the ISOBUS standard but did not prevent communication and testing ...

Most people have become tired of all the bad news we hear every day. It has been a difficult time for everyone. The leadership at AEF thought it would be the right time to put some good news out there for a change and would like to offer the following. A reduction of the AEF membership fee to interested companies that may be considering involvement in the exciting world of ISOBUS development ...

The AEF Data Management team is looking into additional use cases for transport operations. But some important elements are still missing. The elements and attributes to monitor a transport task were not in scope during the definition phase of ISO11783 Part 10. The team has new ideas and proposals for these requirements including the missing documentation. “We need additional functionalities within Part 10 for transport vehicles on the road and weighing systems at farms to have a valuable standard document”, says Hannes Schallermayer, team lead of the AEF Data Management team ...

In 2017 the AEF released the TC-BAS Conformance Test for FMIS. With the upcoming release 2021R2, planned for the 1st of November, the AEF Conformance Test TC-GEO is a major next step for Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS).

The Conformance Test verifies the processing and creation of ISOXML data sets. Furthermore, the FMIS has to be capable of managing farms and fields, plan tasks and list accomplished tasks. TC-GEO adds handling of field boundaries, prescription maps (rxmaps) and the visualization of logged data (as applied maps) ...

The next EIMA, an International Agricultural and Gardening Machinery Exhibition takes place from October 19 thru 23, 2021 in Bologna, Italy.

The AEF will be present with a booth in cooperation with REI and FederUnacoma in hall 36 stand A25. Information about AEF products will be provided, i.e. the AEF functionality concept, AEF ISOBUS Database, AEF Conformance Tests with a focus on how these tools are supporting manufacturers, dealers and end customers in their Agriculture 4.0 approach ...

After 11 years of a long and effective collaboration, it was decided to end the relationship as of September 30, 2021. This collaboration had a long history of successful accomplishments that set the AEF on the right path for future progress. 

CertTech is a North American company that was responsible for testing development based on NI-Test stand environment. This was accomplished with a close working activity with the former Conformance Testing team lead Jaap van Bergeijk and the CT team, also work continued with UT and TC, followed by AUX and TECU ...

Communication & Marketing – Thank you Andrew Olliver and welcome Alfred Kornes and Klaus-Herbert Rolf
Andrew Olliver (CNH Industrial) has left his AEF team leader position in June this year. Since the beginning of the AEF, he has been a member of the Communication and Marketing Team.

After being the deputy, he took the role as the team lead in 2016. Since this time, he was responsible of several AEF publications and fairs. Due to his great effort, AEF gets more and more recognised all over the world. Andrew, thank you very much for your engagement for the communication and marketing activities. Andrew stays closely connected with the AEF as the Vice Chairperson and Steering Committee member ...

October
EIMA international 2021
October 19 – 23, 2021, Bologna / Italy
www.eima.it

5th International VDI Conference - Smart Farming
Virtual event
October 26 – 28, 2021
Registration and Agenda:
www.vdiconference.com


November
AgGateway annual conference
November 8 – 10, 2021, Nashville / Tennessee
www.aggateway.org

EEHE – Elektrik & Elektronik in Hybrid- und Elektrofahrzeugen
und elektrisches Energiemanagement
November 8 – 9, 2021, Essen / Germany


2022

LAND.TECHNIK 2022
February 25 – 26, 2022
https://www.vdiconference.com/ageng/


AGRITECHNICA
February 27 – March 5, 2022, Hanover / Germany
www.agritechnica.com

AEF Spring Plugfest in conjunction with the Commodity Classic
March 9 – 11, 2022, New Orleans / Louisiana
https://commodityclassic.com

AEF Fall Plugfest
October 17 – 21, 2022
, Bologna / Italy