NSA ESPIONAGE NOW IN THE TRACTOR?

STW demonstrates with an exhibition model, state of the art data networking in industrial vehicles.

NSA espionage now also in the tractor? No! At least it hasn’t been discovered yet! Sensor-Technik Wiedemann (STW) will present the “data octopus” at Agritechnica and show how networked data systems are realised in modern industrial vehicles and mobile machines.

The pneumatically actuated model, with sensors on the tentacles, demonstrates how data is collected, stored and made available to the primary “brain” in the head. It is there that the data is processed and distributed, but unlike our NSA friends, with everybody’s knowledge!

STW shows in the model a variety of data sources, such as orientation and acceleration sensors, pressure, temperature and position sensors, as well as a keyboard, a joystick and an operator display. The components are so integrated that the information is passed to a central control unit. It is there that the received data is processed and used to control, through 24 pneumatic cylinders, the arms of the data octopus, and at the same time send the data over the 3G mobile phone network to the internet. The integrated GPS/GLOSNASS receiver, Wireless LAN, Ethernet, Bluetooth, CAN and USB interfaces ensure that this leviathan earns his name the “data octopus”.

With such a system manufacturers of industrial vehicles and mobile machines have the possibility to offer a transparent, flexible and powerful centralised data system. For the end user this means that with a single system, he or she can monitor and document the vehicle operations, optimise the field operations from home and the office. Machines can deliver every thinkable type of information, but key data can also be called up. When desired, thanks to the single source, all relevant data can be made available anywhere in the world. Conversion, interpretation, data loss etc. are relegated to the history of record keeping.

Sensor-Technik Wiedemann will show the friendly, useful side of the data octopus. Similarities with the NSA affair are no coincidence, rather unavoidable.