Objectives of the service
AgriRobot would like to provide a geofencing solution that is significantly more robust and available than GNSS-only systems, particularly near challenging field boundaries, while also incorporating protection against security threats like spoofing, directly addressing key user needs for safety, uptime, and security. Agbot manufacturers are actively working toward fully autonomous solutions, driven by the strong value proposition for farmers seeking to address labor shortages and reduce operational costs through automation. However, autonomy comes only under strict requirements for operational safety. Hence, reliable universal (non-proprietary and agbot agnostic) safety systems that support approval of autonomous operations are demanded by the segment of many smaller, upcoming or specialized agbot manufacturers that pursue a “buy, not make” strategy for the safety system. Geofencing, i.e. establishment of a virtual fence around the machine working area, is an effective safety strategy that is demanded by, but not yet provided for, the above customer segment. Current market solutions for geofencing for agbots are limited and inadequate if adaptation among users of agbot should truly scale. Our Geofence solution will help enable a higher utilization of farmland, which increasingly becomes more expensive, protect biodiversity in terms of hedgerows and the efficiency of any given agbot.
Users and their needs
While the main users are based in Europe, the solution is equally applicable in other regions adopting autonomous farming technologies.
The end users are the actual operators of agbots and autonomous machinery and represent several overlapping roles, each with distinct perspectives on safety, usability, and reliability. Farmers own and manage the land and equipment and expect reliable automation that reduces labor and improves efficiency. Contractors operate machinery across multiple farms and require consistent performance under varying conditions. Operators are responsible for day-to-day operation, maintenance, and interventions, and therefore need intuitive solutions with clear diagnostics. Supervisors oversee fleet behavior and safety compliance and require high-level assurance metrics, traceability, and effective alerting systems.
Lost GNSS signal for autonomous field robots is subject for frustration for most OEMs end-users. The vehicle will stop its operation when the signal is lost or degraded and hence becomes inefficient and not the helping tool as expected. If the GNSS signal is lost or inaccurate, a potential loss in yield of production will be a potential direct consequence. When the agbot stops due to degraded GNSS signal, it requires a user/operator to actively resume the operation each time, so the fewer stops, the lesser frustrations at the user's end.
Service/ system concept
The system is designed to provide reliable positioning performance and high operational safety for autonomous agricultural machinery. It delivers a continuously monitored, high-integrity position estimate, enabling the agbot to maintain reliable position error bounds even in environments where primary positioning sources are degraded and ensuring the system meets a stringent target integrity risk threshold. The system is used to dynamically assess the agbot’s proximity to predefined geofence boundaries and to trigger appropriate safety actions if the risk of boundary violation becomes unacceptable based on the current integrity level and vehicle state. The system also detects and handles localization failures to maintain operational safety, enhances availability by allowing continued operation in GNSS-degraded areas where conventional systems might otherwise halt, and generates alerts in the event of positioning signal anomalies or critical failures. In addition, it provides resilience against intentional signal manipulation through authentication techniques.
The pilots with our customers will verify the end-to-end safety performance of the GEOFENCE system across different operational scenarios, assess robustness and availability in challenging GNSS environments, collect structured feedback from OEMs and end users on usability and operational impact, and compile detailed operational logs and performance data to support the ISO 25119 safety case and final-stage development.
Space Added Value
GNSS is a strategic component in agriculture and a growing volume of the agricultural data is getting stored in GIS farm management systems. Application maps, yield maps, soil maps etc. are becoming increasingly critical and the farmer needs GNSS in all locations of their fields to use these tools efficiently. Other localization sensors will struggle in the open field if there are no good structures to use, so here the GNSS represents the most suitable and affordable sensor technology for localization for precision farming as well as auto-steering and robot navigation.
Current Status
The project started in December 2025 and has completed the Baseline Design Review (BDR) in March 2026.
Pilot customer interviews have highlighted a very strong need for keeping uptime and maximum utilization arable land as possible among their customers.
Machines are setup for test of the initial work with GNSS.
Diagnostic infrastructure is being implemented in the software stack to support GNSS receiver diagnostics and general timing and checking of integrity.
Prime Contractor(s)
