The DLG (German Agricultural Society), which organises Agritechnica, announced the award winners yesterday. Agritechnica is a huge exhibition of the latest farming gear and technology held every two years in Germany.
There were 164 qualifying submissions for the Awards, with one gold and 16 silver award winners.
The NEXAT is a carrier vehicle that can be used for all crop production work, from tillage and sowing to crop protection and harvesting.
Instead of conventional hauling, the implements for tillage and cultivation are carried.
And with a 14m wide version, the system is designed so 95 per cent of the total field area is never driven on (in a controlled traffic situation).
The NEXAT is designed as an autonomous working machine and is equipped with a peripheral monitoring system. A cab that can be rotated through 270 degrees is available for process monitoring.
Integrated implements can be mounted between the four large, electrically-driven track running gear units, which can be rotated by 90 degrees for road travel.
The current design has power supplied by two independent diesel engines, each offering an output of 400kW (545hp), with generators. The vehicle is designed for alternative drive technologies such as fuel cells.
With the integrated NexCo combine harvester module, the NEXAT can achieve claimed grain throughputs of 130-200t/h.
The threshing concept uses a 5.8-m long axial rotor mounted transverse to the direction of travel. The flow of harvested material is introduced centrally into the rotor and at a tangent to achieve energy efficiency.
The rotor divides it into two material flows. This enables roughly twice the threshing performance of conventional machines and establishes the prerequisite for uniform straw and chaff distribution with two choppers, even with a cutting width of 14m.
The NEXAT is made by NEXAT GmbH and Kalverkamp Innovation GmbH in Germany.
Both companies said the award is the culmination of years of development of a globally novel, holistic crop production system based on an electrically-driven, wide-span interchangeable carrier vehicle.
