System and method employing short range communications for communicating and exchanging operational and logistical status information among a plurality of agricultural machines

摘要

A system, and method of use thereof, for enabling short range intercommunication and the exchange of logistical information between and among a plurality of authorized agricultural machines that are designed to be operable in conjunction with one another to effect, as a specific identified group, a given agricultural operation, including a plurality of individual agricultural machines each of which has a communications control portion (36) operable to transmit and receive short distance communications signals and each of which also has authentication credentials associated therewith establishing such machine's entitlement to share in the logistical information and to be considered and treated as a member of the specific identified group involved in the performance of the given agricultural operation, with such individual agricultural machines, when positioned in range of the short distance communications signals of the individual agricultural machines, forming a peer to peer network in which such individual agricultural machines are joined as group members and are operable to effect the distribution over a wireless bus of the peer to peer network of logistical information of a group member of such network.