Posted on 09/30/2017 2:03:05 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
LONDON, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- In what has been described Friday as a world first, a farm field in Britain has been planted and harvested completely by autonomous vehicles and drones without any farmhands in sight.
The hands-free crop farming was delivered in joint project by Harper Adams University in Shropshire and Yorkshire-based Precision Decisions, in an initiative partly-funded by the government agency, Innovate UK.
The renowned agricultural university and Precision Decisions announced Friday the successful completion of "Hands Free Hectare", a project to plant, tend and harvest a crop using only autonomous vehicles and drones.
A spokesman for Innovate UK said: "Using this method returned a yield of 4.5 tonnes of spring barley, against a predicted yield of 5 tonnes. It demonstrates that an entire crop can be grown from start to finish without people ever needing to go into the field to directly work the land. The team believes it's the first in the world to farm a crop in this way. They now plan to replicate the trial with a winter crop."
A number of machines were used in the trial. A lightweight Iseki tractor did the spraying, drilling and rolling. The harvest was then completed with a Sampo combine harvester.
Field work to support decision-making was also done autonomously. Drones with multi-spectral and RGB color sensors were used to take aerial images of the field, while a smaller Scout vehicle was used to video at crop level and physically take samples.
These were sent back to the agronomist to analyze and assess what chemicals to apply and where, and when the crop was ready for harvest.
Smaller machines were specifically chosen to limit the impact on the soil, improve precision and plant health.
Innovate said this supports the thinking that in future, farmers will manage fleets of smaller, autonomous vehicles. These will go out and work in the fields, allowing the farmer to use their time more effectively.
The whole project cost less than 268,000 U.S. dollars, funded by Precision Decisions and Innovate UK.
Sounds nice!
Yes you have to have usable space. When you come down our companionway port side is the engine with cover. Gives me a lot of room in the galley since it’s like an island for food prep. We pulled our the propane stove on gimbals when we bought the boat. Replaced with a 2 burner ceramic cooktop and large convection oven below. Our boat is open and airy. Everyone here that lives on a sailboat is jealous of the room we have. With teenagers it’s still not enough. Lol. She’ll sleep six but boy is that tight quarters.
Good luck with your project! It sounds nice. We’ve had this boat about 15 years and I’ve never stopped working on her. Lol
We had a 43’ Columbia, fin keel 7’ draft, blue water boat with a cutter rig and set for single handed sailing. We were always asked what size boat should we get for live aboard, and we said, “find the boat you like and that you feel will be comfortable for you, and buy one ten feet longer”.
Living aboard or full time in an RV, you learn quickly what is and what isn’t important materially.
up until about 5000 years ago the sahara desert was a green savanah. In only about 100 years it was turned into a desert.
imho the desalination revolution will reverse that.
Graphene is being looked at for desalination.
Reusable Carbon Nanotubes: Water Filter of the Future?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3539654/posts
Could graphene solve world water shortages? A new exhibition examines the evidence
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3461420/posts
My objective, as budget allows, is to have it “autonomous” on a LiFePO4 (lithium iron phosphate) lithium ion battery bank other than water and black tank dumping. A land bound “lifeboat” if you will. Designing an enclosed rack for about 1600 watts of solar on the roof, designed to mimic the look of the old roof storage pod so it won’t look obvious or ugly up there, the curved fuselage look of the vehicle is why I find them so appealing in the first place, so I don’t want to go messing it up, up there.
It has a great retro-looking original roof rail system up there, too, sort of a hybrid between deck railing on a boat and what you would have seen on station wagons of the era, I’m coming up with ways of making that more utilitarian. For one the solar rack would clamp onto it when parked and deployed to help avoid any wind damage or need to “un-deploy” the system if a storm comes up or if it’s just a very windy day.
I’ve found that, other than the Australians, who seem to be way ahead of the US as far as this sort of thing for an RV, that the marine industry has a lot of what I’m looking for. Stands to reason I guess, a boat at sea has to be relatively autonomous. No shore power, fuel needs to be conserved for the engine.
Fascinating project for me, works both sides of my brain, left and right. Quite the puzzle to pull it all off and still have it just as pretty as it was originally intended to be. CAD, CNC and 3D printing have made a whole lot of things possible on a one-off scale that weren’t accessible to anyone but the very wealthy just a few short years ago. Still not exactly cheap, but way more affordable than paying a custom shop to hand build what you’ve got in mind.
Yep. Ours is a 40 ft cutter rigged and one person can sail it from the cockpit. When we bought the boat we thought it was too big for us and for years was fine. About 5 years ago the grandkids started coming over with me. Now one is a teenage girl and can’t go anywhere without dragging along a friend or 2. Lol
Hubby is essentially disabled now and can no longer sail anyway and I’m tired of doing all the work. So....an aft cabin, double cabin motor yacht we can board, turn the key and go makes more sense for us now. I’ve been shopping. I like Carvers and Hatteras because of all the usable space. 41-45 foot is just about right. Most of the time it’s just me on board anyway. I’m trying to stay within certain footage because I don’t want to move from my slip. I have the best live aboard neighbors!
There are a lot of storied, old-line boat builders here in North Carolina, I’ve seen some stunning stuff crossing the bar out on the OBX. If I come into a windfall I’d love to hire one of them to redo the cabinetry in teak, but that’s hard to come by in good economic times. They’ll take on a motorhome when things are slow, but not when they’re booming.
I was doing fine until that part.
And we can stop with the "migrant" workers?
You didn’t know that farming involves chemicals? Or what?
Have you ever looked at Willis out on Harker’s Island?
“Everything is smaller in the UK. Their typical size refrigerator is what we would call a “bar fridge”. A regular size fridge is called an “American fridge”.”
No, I’m not going there...
The hard labor will be fixing all the robots.
You have a point, but so do I, that the hard labor of farming as it is today will be mostly gone.
Better yet, let’s do without migrant labor now and thereby spur the development and adoption of autonomous farm mechanization.
I guess it depends which ones, how much, and how well the machines would calibrate the application. This is definitely one of the issues separating agribusiness farming from organic produce.
Agreed; especially if it can develop and bring down the price of organic production.
Fixing farm robots may prove tiresome but will rarely be physically taxing or require long hours. Embedded systems will diagnose most mechanical problems and guide repairs. Even today, in some early applications, computerized repair manuals are responsive to voice commands, with instructions both spoken and displayed in virtual reality. As computer vision and AI advance, repair techs will be guided by directions and visual cuing that point out precisely what to do and where.
Indoor farming may in time provide cheaper organic produce. With the advantages of controlled and protected growing conditions without pesticides and herbicides, indoor farming is highly productive. Yet it is in its early days and remains pricey, in large part due to labor costs. I think that robotic systems may provide an answer there as well.
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