Obstacle avoidance is a key aspect for any autonomous vehicles, and their usage in agriculture must overcome additional challenges such as handling interactions with agricultural workers and other tractors in order to avoid severe accidents. The simultaneous presence of autonomous vehicles and workers on foot definitely calls for safer designs, vehicle management systems and major developments in personal protective equipment (PPE). To cope with these present and future challenges, the “SMARTGRID” project described in this paper deploys an integrated wireless safety network infrastructure based on the integration of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices and passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags designed to identify obstacles, workers, nearby vehicles and check if the right PPE is in use. With the aim of detecting workers at risk by scanning for passive RFID-integrated into PPE in danger areas, transmitting alerts to workers who wear them, tracking of near-misses and activating emergency stops, a deep analysis of the safety requirements of the obstacle detection system is shown in this study. Test programs have also been carried out on an experimental farm with detection ranging from 8 to 12 meters, proving that the system might represent a good solution for collision avoidance between autonomous vehicles and workers on foot.

Noise is a major physical hazard in agricultural activities, and numerous research activities have managed to detect its effects, resulting in surveys and measurements which help to define exposure limits, prevention methods, and control strategies. This review aims to collect and analyse the data from research studies and to provide a comprehensive overview on the subject. Thus, a set of 81 papers, gathered from the Scopus and PubMed scientific databases, has been analysed to provide information regarding the evolution of noise exposure levels over time, to highlight findings on noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), and to list strategies for noise prevention and control in agriculture. Bibliographic research showed that noise measurements between 1991 and 2022, included in scientific research on farming, forestry, and animal husbandry, mainly reported values beyond the threshold of 85 dB(A); furthermore, several research activities on NIHL showed that farmers’ family members and children are often exposed to high levels of noise. Lastly, an analysis of the prevention and control strategies over time is provided, focusing on prevention programmes, screening, and the use of hearing protection devices (HPD). The identified literature suggests that additional efforts are required in regards to machinery design relating to the socio-technical aspects of agricultural activities and that side-effects of NIHL, as well as the negative impact of noise on other risks, might deserve further investigation.

Performance analyses of mechanised vineyard activities require a reliable source of information that allows proper sizing of the tractor fleet according to field requirements and an assessment of the operating costs generated by them. To achieve that, however, a large amount of data regarding the power required by machinery and their field capacity, together with fuel consumption per hour and per hectare, is needed. This research, based on CAN-bus raw data collected from narrow tractors of 75 kW through a farming management information system (FMIS) system and then processed through a Python package called Vineyardutils created by the authors resulted in a dataset that summarises 374 labelled mechanised operations over a total of 717 working hours. The summary of each operation specifies its type, duration, idle time, speed and engine parameters such as temperature, engine speed, and torque; in addition, the dataset also includes the terrain slope, fuel consumption and size of the working area. As a result, the lowest values of fuel consumption per hour and per area have been estimated for activities such as fertilisation (4.95 ± 1.20 l/h, 3.73 ± 1.48 l/ha), whereas the highest values belong to harvest operations (14.70 ± 3.39 l/h, 11.69 ± 4.68 l/ha); regarding field capacity, values range from 0.54 ha/h for leaf removal to 4.46 ha/h for multirow crop protection. Furthermore, correlations have been found regarding environmental temperature and requested power, with evidence for most of the activities. Future developments can include different tractor engine setups and additional field data.