by Professor James Lowenberg-DeBoer
Water management on farms has used laser-guided levelling since the 1990s. Many critical field operations now rely on global positioning satellites (GPS), smart vision systems, and laser guidance.
Such techniques help the farmer to plant and harvest crops uniformly. Optimal planting strategies can increase yields by as much as 20%. However, most autonomous systems are currently driver supervised. A human operator on or near the vehicle ensures systems are working as intended.
In 2016, the first fully autonomous farm plots were successfully planted and harvested without human intervention in the field (see the Hands Free Hectare case study below). In addition to these, further autonomous units are now under development, including those at the UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) Network based at the University of Lincoln. Such systems may also include larger units that operate under ‘supervised autonomy’, for example where one tractor has a driver and additional vehicles follow the human supervised unit.
Case study
Hands Free Hectare and Farm
© Photo: JHFH, Harper Adams
The future of autonomous farming has been long discussed, with the earliest references going back to the early 1960s. Many of the hypothesised benefits of automation in agriculture are around improving the overall sustainability of the farming sector.
By removing the requirement of dedicated operators for each field machine, automation has the opportunity to reduce the scale of farm vehicles, reversing the trend of mechanisation to date, and critically reducing the compressive load imposed on farm soils, allowing them to regenerate.
These small machines coupled with targeted application technologies could enable ultra-precise high resolution management with the possibility to reduce volume of farm level agronomic inputs while maintaining output.
The Hands Free Hectare (HFH) was a collaborative project which aimed to complete the world’s first autonomous cereal cropping cycle on one hectare of land to move the industry nearer these ambitious objectives of automation.
Initially, the HFH utilised open-source unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems integrated into commercially available small-scale agricultural equipment. A tractor and combine harvester was fitted with a UAV control system, RTK high precision GNSS positioning and safety systems. The autonomous cropping cycle of spring barley was completed in 2017 from seed establishment through to harvest. All activities in the HFH were conducted autonomously, including the use of drones and ground scout robots to monitor the crop’s development.
This achievement was repeated in 2018 and was well received by the agricultural community but created further questions around a commercial output.
In 2019, the Hands Free Farm (HFF) was established to develop and showcase autonomous farming on a farm scale. The collaboration of academic and commercial partners has developed the systems required to farm 35 ha of land made up five typical UK fields which pose all the challenges of a commercial farm, including abnormal shapes, trees, power lines and footpaths.
Economic analysis of the HFH and HFF automation shows potential benefits in terms of reduced cost of production to the order of £20-30 per tonne of wheat alongside possible gains made through soil regeneration and input reduction. Small-scale autonomous agriculture machinery and improving soil health will open the opportunity for reduced in field power requirements and therefore a move to battery electrification.
Connected autonomous vehicles
Agxeed autonomous field equipment
Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV) prototype testing and demonstration projects are already taking place across the UK and globally, with commercially available autonomous vehicles:
- Weeding machines operate in field vegetable crops to eliminate weeds. Autonomous systems identify and eradicate weeds using blades (or electric shocks). These vehicles operate on a pay-per-acre basis.
- Monarch electric tractors include an optional driverless mode that enables the unit to complete preprogrammed tasks, or the vehicles can be slaved to follow other vehicles.
- Harvest Croo use light detection and ranging systems (LIDR) on an automated strawberry picking device that is designed to handle fragile fruit in protected environments.
- Metomotion offer GRoW (Greenhouse Robotic Worker) for dedicated greenhouse plant management and they estimate that one GRoW robot per hectare may deliver a circa 50% reduction in labour cost for ‘hi-tech’ green houses in northern Europe.
- Agrobot offer bespoke automation solutions in a variety of applications, for the soft fruit sector in protected and field operations.
- AgXeed design, build and maintain autonomous agricultural field equipment solutions that are developed for a specific customer need.
These are early market solutions, with additional testing and development needed before commercial adoption within a specific setting.
Novel fuels and powertrain demonstration
The speed of replacement of fossil fuels on farms and in rural communities will be greatly enhanced by more on farm working demonstration sites often managed by ‘early adopters’ of new and emerging technologies. These are essential to showcase the credentials of electric, gas and hybrid zero-carbon ICE power trains, plus autonomous vehicles using robotic technology.
Government support for such demonstration sites, as well as increased investment in robotics, artificial intelligence and rural broadband should prove beneficial, leading to faster greenhouse gas emission reduction and more sustainably sourced food production systems.