Automated Work Records for Precision Agriculture Management: A Low-Cost GNSS IoT Solution for Paddy Fields in Central Japan

Agricultural field operations are generally tracked as work records (WR), incorporating data points such as; work type, machine type, timestamped trajectories and field information. WR data which is automatically recorded by modern machinery equipped with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can enable efficient farm management decision making. Globally, farmers often rely on aged or legacy farming machinery and manual data recording, which introduces significant labor costs and increases the risk of inaccurate data input. To address this challenge, a field study in Central Japan was conducted to showcase automated data collection by retrofitting legacy farming machinery with low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) devices. For single-purpose vehicles (SPV), which only carry out single work types such as planting, LTE (Long Term Evolution) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) units were installed to record trajectory data. For multi-purpose vehicles (MPV), such as tractors which perform multiple work types, the configuration settings of these vehicles had to include implements and attachments data. To obtain this data, industry standard LTE-GNSS Bluetooth gateways were fitted onto MPV and low-cost BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacons were attached to implements. After installation, over a seven-month field preparation and planting period 1,623 WR, including 421 WR for SPV and 1,120 WR for MVP, were automatically obtained. For MPV, the WR included detailed configuration settings enabling detection of the specific work types. These findings demonstrate the potential of low cost IoT GNSS devices for precision agriculture strategies to support management decisions in farming operations.