Photo by www.kubota.com
Kubota Xtractor
The X Tractor by Kubota can sense everything from the weather to the terrain to the growth rate of plants.
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Three years ago, in February of 2018, we took our first deep dive into the world of Artificial Intelligence in agriculture. At the time, Case had come out with its Autonomous Concept Vehicle in 2017, a tractor with no cab because it had no driver. The concept vehicle ran by itself using a combination of AI and sensors like cameras, LIDAR, and GPS.
But Case was hardly alone in this new area of research and development. Companies large and small are developing new technologies for precision farming that bring AI-powered robotics and advanced sensor technology onto the farm. In fact, while the topic of autonomous passenger vehicles gets more press, it’s the agriculture industry that is leading the way in development of autonomous or intelligent devices like tractors, intelligent sprayers, precision picking and seeding devices, and drones that can survey or even target spray the fields.
There are powerful reasons for this research, which is driven by an agricultural dilemma. With the world’s population soaring to an estimated 10 billion people by 2050, farmers must produce 50 per cent more food while greatly reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and their use of herbicides, fertilizers and pesticides.
According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), farming and forestry is the single greatest driver of global warming, other than the production of energy itself. IPCC scientists concluded that land use for farming and forestry produces almost a quarter (24 per cent) of all the human-caused greenhouse gases, measured as CO2 equivalents (CO2-e).
Agriculture is also the largest producer of the most dangerous greenhouse gases like methane (30X worse than CO2 per tonne) and nitrous oxide from fertilizers (300X worse than CO2 per tonne). Increased use of fertilizers have also increased the issues with deadly algae blooms due to phosphorous runoff, not to mention the environmental issues caused by herbicides and pesticides.
Increasing production without greatly increasing efficiency and lowering the use of these agricultural inputs would, according to climatologists and ecologists, result in an unprecedented environmental disaster that could even threaten life on earth. The goal today is to double food production without clearing more land, and while reaching carbon neutrality.
With so much at stake, agricultural technology companies are pulling out all the stops in a bid to massively increase efficiency and productivity, and lower the use of agricultural inputs.
Orchard and Vine has already covered many of these innovations over the years. A good example would be the fully automated, robotic weeding machine developed by Eleos Robotics in BC. The purpose of Eleos is to largely eliminate spraying of herbicides by automating the pulling of weeds, using a tireless robotic assistant that also lowers costs for the farmer.
Eleos is among a growing number of companies developing completely autonomous tractors or devices that can act with greater precision than human labour. In fact, a sprawling report by Research and Markets predicts the market for farm tractors will more than double - from less than $30 billion today to $60.7 billion by 2025 - as the “autonomous farm tractor becomes an essential constituent of precision agriculture.”
Every large tractor company in the world is investing in this sector. Research and Markets lists two dozen companies making big strides in this area of research, including John Deere, Mahindra, Kubota, and Case, among others.
Photo by www.bluerivertechnology.com
Blue River Technology
Blue River combines computer vision and sophisticated machine learning algorithms to spray selectively.
John Deere, for example, paid $305 million to buy Blue River Technology three years ago to enhance its R&D into autonomous vehicles and precision farming. Blue River had previously raised $31
million in venture funding, and subsequently developed precision farming technology that the company claimed could reduce the volume of chemicals used on the farm by up to 90 per cent.
Blue River’s tech includes “integrated computer vision” matched with AI that can see and identify weeds among the crops, and precisely target herbicides to the affected area, largely eliminating widespread spraying.
“These [sprayers] are better equipped for individual [weed] variants that we see on farms every single day,” said Lee Redden, co-founder and chief technology officer of Blue River. “It allows you to decrease the amount of herbicide you’re applying.”
Other companies, like tech giant Bosch, have also released systems that autonomously identify weeds, and precisely target spray to the infestation.
In January, 2020, Kubota unveiled a stunning new autonomous tractor with a decidedly Robocop vibe, powered by solar-generated electricity and boasting advanced artificial intelligence.
Called the X Tractor, the machine can sense everything from the weather to the terrain to the growth rate of plants, taking in the data needed to precisely apply fertilizer or pesticides, to quickly and precisely seed the fields, or to harvest crops. The X Tractor runs on four sets of tracks, and can raise or lower its chassis to better accomplish the task at hand, or turn in a tight circle like a tank.
Designed to operate even in rice paddies, the X Tractor is able to drive autonomously over the most difficult terrain with no human intervention.
But it’s not just tractors that are seeing revolutionary change. The war on agricultural waste has also launched an air campaign, as dozens of companies have produced intelligent drones that accomplish a wide variety of tasks.
www.deere.co.uk
JD AI
John Deere’s new autonomous tractor concept has a very compact electric drive unit.
Most farmers by now are familiar with drones that take multispectral images that help identify differences between healthy and distressed plants. There are two main types of drones in use today. The first are the fixed wing craft that can cover large areas very quickly, but lack as much detail in their images, and the second being the multi-rotor drones that don’t cover as much ground, but provide much more precise and detailed imagery.
Drones, some of them autonomous, are now taking over the jobs of more expensive crop sprayers, and have been doing so since 2015 when the Federal Aviation Authority in the US approved the Yamaha RMAX as the first drone over 55 pounds (25kg) to be able to carry tanks filled with fertilizers, pesticides or other chemicals.
One 2019 study in Brazil showed the benefits of precision drone spraying when farmers used a senseFly eBee X drone combined with xarvio Field Manager software to detect and then eradicate weed infestations. The study found that the farmers used 52 per cent less herbicides, but those results are expected to improve as companies like senseFly or Skyx improve their technology in coming years.
Another innovative company, FlashForest in Canada, has taken drone technology a giant step further, creating a system to plant tree seedlings for forestry companies using large rotary drones. The drones essentially fires specially created seed pods into the earth, using a combination of its seed-pod technology, aerial mapping software, and AI automation. While the technology is currently only being used in forestry, it’s not hard to see the potential for rapid, mass seeding on the farm as well.
This revolution in autonomous farming also impacts another major farm input; namely, labour. In many modern, industrialized countries it can be very difficult to find affordable, trained farm workers, and Canada brings in thousands of seasonal workers every year to fill the gap. From 1950 to 2010, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), agricultural labourers as a percentage of the workforce declined from 81% to 48.2% in developing countries, and from 35% to 4.2% in developed ones.
Autonomous robots working tirelessly in the fields are now capable of doing most of the onerous, repetitive work, and it is almost certain that they will not only ease the labour shortage, but also take jobs away from human workers.
In France, it was the chronic shortage of farm labour that led Christophe Millot to develop a vine-pruning robot called Wall-Ye. The tiny robot is fast and accurate, making a cut every five seconds on average, working 10 to 12 hours on a single charge, and able to work day and night.
The fascinating question is just how far the technology can go. Just 10 years ago all of the technologies described here were the stuff of science fiction, and most of them have achieved some sort of commercial viability in only the past six years.
But as investment in climate friendly technologies increases, and the demand for clean, sustainable food rises, it’s not difficult to imagine that over the next decade the sight of ‘robot farmers’ will become increasingly common.
