Hexagon and Leica Geosystems in Agriculture

"Smart Farming" is becoming more and more wide spread. This is essential due to the world's rising population requiring more resources than many farmers can provide. Smart farming leads to better crop yields and more efficient and cost effective farming. The time of the laboring farmer doing everything by hand is slowly coming to an end with innovations like self driving tractors. Tractors capable of driving themselves didn't come from nowhere, it came from years of innovations in different areas like Guidance, Auto-Steer, Application Control, etc. all of which are combined into one smart tractor.
The purpose of this series of blog posts is to talk about "standing on the shoulders of giants" and Hexagon certainly are giants who are "Shaping Change with Smart Solutions". They are helping many different industries by providing information technologies that raise productivity and quality. [1]

Hexagon - Shaping Change with Smart Solutions

Of course Hexagon can't lead us into the future single handedly. That's where the likes of Leica Geosystems comes in. They are a part of Hexagon and are focused on increasing automation, effectiveness and efficiency in the agricultural industry to improve yield while saving costs. [2]

In my previous "Smart Farming?" blog post, I talked about the difficulties of getting perfect field coverage when spreading fertilizer. It seems that many other farmers had the same or similar issues so Leica Geosystems have developed Guidance and Auto-Steering [3] solutions like the mojo3D for use in tractors. The mojo3D can be used along side a SteerDirect ES Plus, also made by Leica, to not only keep track of where the tractor has already sprayed pesticides but also steer the tractor. I know how complicated that all sounds but Leica developed a user interface that makes controlling the system very straight forward. So instead of spending hours reading a manual trying to figure out how it works the simple guide below shows you everything you will need to do to use the system effectively.

Leica mojo3D

by Thomas Murphy

[1] Hexagon Overview
[2] Hexagon & Leica Geosystems
[3] Guidance & Auto-Steer Solutions