Intelligent Upgrading of Agriculture --- Application of Automatic Driving of Agricultural Machinery

China's urbanization rate has been rising in recent years. According to the results of the seventh national population census in 2020, China's urbanization rate has reached 63.89%. More data points out that China's urbanization rate will reach 75% to 80% in 2035. One result of this is that the shortage of agricultural labor is becoming increasingly serious. Therefore, how to improve the efficiency of agricultural work has become a topic of concern to the industry, society and the country.

The combination of automatic driving and agriculture is expected to solve this industry pain point. Automatic driving agricultural machinery can not only alleviate the problem of labor shortage and improve the efficiency of labor production, but also intelligently upgrade agriculture and become one of the effective means to solve the current agricultural pain points.

With the development of society, traditional agriculture, with its honesty and virtue, welcomes advanced technologies and production methods such as biotechnology, Internet information technology and intelligent technology, and continues to innovate and transform, ushering in a new era of intelligent agriculture development. It is estimated that the total output value of global smart agriculture will reach 68.389 billion US dollars by 2025, and the fastest growing is in the Asia-Pacific region. Smart agriculture mainly includes field precision agriculture, smart animal husbandry, smart fishery, and smart greenhouse, and the main technologies include remote sensing and sensor systems, agricultural big data and cloud service technology, and intelligent agricultural equipment.

In China, the continuous increase in demand for modern agricultural machinery and the continuous development and application of new technologies will promote the sustained and rapid growth of the smart agricultural market. As of December 2021, a total of 1094 cooperatives, 1734 agricultural business entities and 1425 farmers have launched the system platform. In 2021, the national agricultural science and education system vigorously promoted agricultural scientific and technological innovation and the promotion and application of achievements, and achieved a large number of landmark achievements. The contribution rate of agricultural scientific and technological progress exceeded 60%, and the number of high-quality farmers reached 17 million, which played an important role in supporting and leading agricultural and rural development. The scale of China's smart agriculture market will be about 68.5 billion yuan in 2021. It is expected that the scale of China's smart agriculture market will further increase to 74.3 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of 8.5% year on year.

According to the forecast data of the United Nations on population and hunger, the global population will increase by 2 billion by 2050, and agricultural productivity needs to increase by 60% to provide adequate food. By 2050, artificial intelligence and machine learning are likely to become the core of new technologies to cope with the expected food demand brought by the 2 billion new population. In the future, the global expenditure on networked intelligent agricultural technology and systems will increase significantly.

The development of intelligent agriculture is inseparable from intelligent and automatic equipment. China's agricultural development urgently needs the close combination of automatic driving and agricultural machinery. With the support of automatic driving, Internet of Things and other technologies, agricultural machinery equipment that looks like a "single board" has taken on a new look. Auto-driven agricultural machinery and equipment can reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers by more than 30%, improve the operation efficiency by more than 50%, and play a positive role in crop cultivation and production. Automatic driving of agricultural machinery has become an important part of China's development of smart agriculture with Chinese characteristics.

The automatic driving of agricultural machinery applies Beidou satellite navigation technology, uses modern mechanical equipment and monitoring system to carry out fine fertilization, pesticide application, seeding and harvesting, provides real-time location information, minimizes the restriction of night and fog weather on the length of agricultural machinery working in the field, effectively improves the operation accuracy, avoids the repetition and omission of operation, greatly improves the working efficiency of agricultural machinery, and also greatly improves the utilization rate of land. At the same time of reducing costs and inputs, improve crop yield and quality, and obtain better output benefits. At the same time, it greatly liberates human resources, liberates drivers from heavy operations, and improves their economic benefits for farms, agricultural machinery cooperatives and farmers. The demand of agricultural production operators for automatic driving of agricultural machinery will continue to grow.

By 2021, more than 65000 Beidou agricultural machinery auto drive system have been deployed in China, while domestic large and medium-sized agricultural tractors are expected to exceed 4.6 million, with a penetration rate of only 1.4%. It is estimated that the penetration rate of China's agricultural auto drive system will reach about 20% by 2035. Due to the increase of domestic farmland circulation area and the preliminary improvement of the construction of high standard farmland, the sales volume of agricultural machinery auto drive system system has exploded in recent years, and China's agricultural machinery autopilot industry has entered a rapid development period.

In May 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the Notice on the Implementation of Agricultural Production Development and Other Projects in 2021, which clearly proposed that "increase subsidies for highend, duplex and intelligent agricultural machinery products, promote the application of Beidou navigation intelligent terminals", "deepen the promotion and application of Beidou system in agricultural systems" "Support the service subjects who install and use mechanical operation monitoring sensors and Beidou navigation terminals, and carry out agricultural production socialized services in a centralized manner".

The automatic driving technology of agricultural machinery has greatly improved the efficiency of agricultural work since its application, and it has also been greatly recognized worldwide. In order to grasp the most advanced technology and seize the highest market, countries have increased their research on automatic driving technology of agricultural machinery. The global agricultural machinery automatic driving industry has formed a diversified development pattern of "agricultural machinery+Internet" giants jointly leading the layout of startups. Facing the technological monopoly of overseas agricultural technology companies, automatic driving of agricultural machinery has become one of the first technological routes to break through in China.

Before 2015, the domestic market of intelligent agricultural machinery was occupied by overseas brands such as John Deere, Kesner Netherlands, Klass, Tianbao and Topcon. In recent years, domestic selfdriving agricultural machinery has gradually entered the rapid growth period from the cultivation period.

As autonomous driving agricultural machinery products are different from traditional agricultural machinery, the technical threshold of the industry is relatively high, and the number of existing enterprises in the industry is small, which can be mainly divided into two categories: one is technology companies, such as Beijing Bochuang Linkage, Guangdong Jifei, etc., which mainly take auto drive system as the core product; The other is the traditional machinery and automobile manufacturing enterprises or their subsidiaries, such as Qingdao Lovol Heavy Industries, etc., based on their own manufacturing base and financial strength, began to rapidly transform to the direction of agricultural machinery automatic driving business.

"The automatic driving of agricultural machinery is relatively an important route to realize the digital development of China's agriculture and improve the comprehensive production capacity of agriculture." The relevant person in charge of Bochuang Linkage said that the auto drive system of agricultural machinery can realize the intelligent transformation of existing agricultural machinery, improve the application level of agricultural machinery, achieve intelligent human-computer interaction, and greatly improve the efficiency of agricultural production, which is more suitable for the current national conditions of China.

The application of automation technology in agricultural production can greatly improve the degree of refinement in various farming stages, such as cultivation and harvest management, and achieve the set goal through the set route and data automatic driving. Under the condition that the agricultural output remains unchanged or even increases, the capital input, human cost input and time cost input are reduced. Reduced production costs.

In addition, agricultural machinery automation can effectively ensure the quality of agricultural production. Compared with traditional manual farming, this farming method with high precision, strict requirements, established routes and accurate data is obviously more refined and scientific and sustainable. Finally, it can bring agricultural production and income increase and quality improvement. In the past, the manual operation depended more on the experience and knowledge of agricultural machinery operators. The automatic driving agricultural machinery after the transformation of Bochuang linkage can effectively reduce the operation intensity of agricultural machinery operators and reduce the technical threshold of agricultural machinery operators. Only a beginner can complete the complex agricultural machinery farming operation, and the operation quality and consistency can easily surpass an experienced old operator.

With the development of science and technology, the use of unmanned agricultural machinery in the future is bound to be the general trend. From mechanization to unmanned, farmers have been liberated from heavy physical labor and greatly improved the efficiency of operation. The progress of automatic driving of agricultural machinery has not only brought efficient production operations to farmers, but also gradually changed their way of life. In the future, more and more intelligent agricultural machinery will be used in agricultural production, liberating the labor force, improving the efficiency and quality of work, and further promoting the digital transformation of agriculture.