News UA - Consortium to prevent accidents with agricultural machinery includes UA

The University of Aveiro (UA) participates in the AgroSafeBox consortium, created to prevent accidents involving agricultural machinery, which are the main cause of death in agricultural work nationwide. These accidents are the main cause of death in agricultural work at national level, registering, according to data from the National Road Safety Authority, 71 fatalities in 2017, 59 in 2018, 54 in 2019 and 44 in 2020.

Accidents with agricultural tractors caused, on average, five deaths per month in 2017, according to a report by the National Confederation of Agricultural Cooperatives and Agricultural Credit of Portugal (Confagri).

Faced with these very expressive numbers, teams of four entities (two companies and two non-business entities) got together to develop the AgroSafeBox project, recently approved and which has the support of COMPETE 2020 within the scope of the System of Incentives for Research and Technological Development in Co-promotion.

System for agricultural tractors and quad bikes

The AgroSafeBox project - Intelligent Alert System for AgroVehicles Rollover and Driver Safety, consists of developing a safety product for agricultural and forestry machines with driver. It proposes to monitor, in real-time, the location, inertia and other parameters of a vehicle, together with the driver's physiological signals, in order to prevent the occurrence of accidents in the context of agricultural and forestry operations. The developed equipment will be integrated into tractors and quad bikes.

The consortium led by Project Box, Lda., has the participation of TIS - Technological and Intelligent Systems, Lda., the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu and a UA team composed of researchers from the Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics (DETI) and of the Higher School of Health (ESSUA), coordinated by Nuno Lau (DETI).

(Photo by Mark Stebnicki on Pexels portal)

(This text has been translated)