While smarter agricultural machinery is becoming commonplace, a partnership between four European companies has resulted in the first "intelligent" trailer axle, ensuring agricultural trailers are not left behind.
Coordinated by Italian axle manufacturer ADR, with input from French suspension company Colaert Essieux, Italian engineering firm Rina and Slovenian trailer manufacturer Farmtech, the Teknoax 2.0 partnership was formed with the goal of producing a higher performing intelligent axle for agricultural trailers.
A spokesperson for Teknoax 2.0 said while farm machinery has evolved towards precision agriculture, trailers have remained a bottleneck to technology development.
"The axle can be described roughly as a beam with wheels connected to its extremities, and have historically had limited or no intelligence associated with them," they said.
"This is restricting the scale of benefits of innovation in other equipment and leading to unnecessary maintenance and unexpected failures."
The spokesperson said Teknoax 2.0 had delivered a new axle, which monitored performance and working conditions, alerting the operator when maintenance was needed.
"The intelligent axles also include an inflating and deflating system so that tyres can be automatically adjusted to working conditions," they said.
"This helps to improve trailer performance on-road and on-field, increase life cycles and further reducing operating costs.
"Indeed, the project to develop these smart units and deliver them to market has the potential to increase farming efficiency and push precision farming to the next level."
