Future Connections in Ag Tech: A Conversation With Bosch’s Micha Muenzenmay
2 September 2022 As agricultural technology continues to advance, the development of interconnectivity is vital for transferring information, machine performance, and accessing crucial data for planting, water conservation, use of crop inputs, and other decisions to enhance crop production. As a part of Meister Media’s Global Insight series, we talked with Dr. Micha Muenzenmay from Bosch to learn about advances in ag tech interconnectivity.
Meet your Expert
Muenzenmay is a Director of Systems Engineering for Commercial Vehicles and Off-Highway Applications at Robert Bosch and CTO of NEVONEX, a digital machine service platform. Muenzenmay has a background in electronic control, automation, driver assistance, electronic control units and connectivity. He shares his perspectives on how connectivity is currently being used in ag tech and how it will affect farming in the future.
ABG: What are the latest developments in ag tech and connectivity?
MM: Over the last four or five years, connectivity has really made a big step forward. If you look at it from a system perspective, connectivity has moved forward with cloud application programming interfaces (APIs). This not only enables simple data transfers, but also makes data and abilities of assets, like machines, available to the cloud community, so that everybody that wants to do development can do so.
We’ve also seen implementation of standardized data exchange across machines. This is happening in the United States with AgGateway, and in parallel in Europe with Agrirouter. It’s great that these two initiatives are happening between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
There is also a lot of progress with regards to intelligent machines, cloud technology, and modern algorithms, such as artificial intelligence or process chain optimization, that have laid a beautiful foundation for innovation in our industry.
ABG: What developments do you see happening for interconnectivity in the upcoming years?
MM: I wouldn’t like to mention the big word of disruption, but it really will be something different.
With the rollout of 5G and industry-wide digitalization efforts, a lot of innovation will happen. This will support faster data transfer, which I see as the need in high-end application. In addition, low-latency communication allows better machine autonomy. And not to forget, we can even more strongly benefit from on-machine edge computing.
We will also see a much stronger interconnectivity between the cloud and the processes on the machine. We see a lot of baby steps happening. All the backend technologies that require data and services will have a much better and more seamless interlink with the machines.
ABG: What about cybersecurity in agriculture? Is it a concern?
MM: Agriculture is an extremely critical infrastructure as we need to feed the people in the world. Therefore, agriculture will also be at risk of cyberattacks. In the next three to five years, I can see the industry doing tremendous work to create more secure solutions.
ABG: What about data collection from growers and privacy?
MM: In three to five years, we will also see a lot of new business models and connectivity services. Unfortunately, all these new business models play on the turf of data. Growers handing over data might provide their competitors with insights regarding how profitable they are, so they may be reluctant to share the data.
But it also benefits growers: They will be part of the data community and can subscribe and use better and value-added services that improves their operations, efficiency, and farming practices. The farmer should have the free choice in what digital service he consumes and with whom he wants to share his data.
So as an industry, in the next three to five years, we will have solved the problem and come up with technology that brings value to the farmer, and protects the interests of the farmer, so he can keep his data private.
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