Spring is not just the beginning of a season of work in agriculture. In part, the feelings of the agrarian can be compared to gambling – lucky with the weather or not. Will the soil be too wet or dry? The end of March is already a «serious occasion» to start work. But if the earth is wet, then an ordinary tractor may not go out into the field. Of course, for the self-propelled sprayer «Vodoley» this is not a problem – thanks to low-pressure tires, he will perform the work in full, even with heavily wet soil. But soil cultivation includes other operations.
The development named «Robotti», from Agrointelli (Aarhus, Denmark), will have to solve this problem. This modular stand-alone carrier unit is driven by a diesel engine. All four wheels are driving. Due to the weight of 600kg, it exerts a slight pressure on the soil. A three-point hitch allows lifting 750 kg. The maximum speed of moving across the field - 8 km / h. Constructive features help to distribute weight between wheels as evenly as possible even when connecting external modules.
This system refers to unmanned vehicles. Control is possible using a tablet or smartphone. It is possible to use both for moving heavy objects and for small traction efforts – moving on the field during spraying of the plant protection products.
At present, the company has focused on the changing of the diesel engine to fully electrified drive. Also, the developement of the autonomous navigation and the main components of the software are being finalized. The result of such a work from the company Agrointelli should be an integrated wireless network. In addition to receiving commands from operators, it will allow the technics to exchange information directly to improve the quality of work performed. The plans of the company are robotic tractors that receives information from the UAV to make adjustments to their work.
Separate direction – the development of a camera to search for weeds, over which 15 people from the Agrointelli team works now. According to the developers, this solution will be able to reduce the cost of the herbicides. The outflow of the herbicides will increase in places of increased weed growth, and decrease where there are none.
At the moment, the American company does not yet name the estimated price of this project. Also, it is unclear whether the export of such equipment will soon be possible abroad. That gives some head start to the ukrainian developers working in the field of agriculture.
What should (according to the plan of numerous developers) robots give to the owner of the agricultural enterprise?
First, they can work around the clock.
Secondly, using of the robots should reduce likelihood of stealing fuel and seed during the execution of work.
Third – all the results of their work are stored in the database and this process is transparent.
Thus, reducing the impact of the human factor, robots should reduce some of the costs and improve the quality of the work performed on the field.
