PHOTO: HARPER ADAMS UNIVERSITY
FIELD ROBOTS ▶▶▶
Hands Free Farm is UK’s first autonomous farm
H BY HUGO CLAVER
FHa started in 2016 with the aim to be the first in the world to grow, tend and harvest a crop without op- erators in the driving seats or
agronomists on the ground. The project has been taken through two successful cropping cycles and has won a number of awards; in- cluding the prestigious BBC Food and Farming Future Food Award. The follow up, the new Hands Free Farm, will be a three-year project run in a partnership between Harper Adams and Precision Decisions, along with a new partner: the UK division of Australian precision agriculture specialist Farmscan AG. The project is based at the university’s campus in Shrop- shire. The Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation Centre (Agri-Epi Centre) provides the team with development space and project management support at its Midlands Agri-Tech Innovation Hub, also on this campus.
A vision on the future of farming Jonathan Gill, Mechatronics Researcher: “This time, we are planning to grow three different combinable crops across 35 hectares. We are moving past the feasibility study which the hec- tare provided us with, to a vision of the future of farming. We want to prove the capability and ability of these systems in reducing the levels of soil compaction and precision application.” Martin Abell, Mechatronics Engineer for Preci- sion Decisions, said: “With the farm, we are looking to solve problems like fleet manage- ment, swarm vehicle logistics and navigation. We still believe that smaller vehicles are best, so we will be using up to three small tractors (including our original Iseki), and a Claas com- bine will be joining our old Sampo.” This time the team will move away from the perfect hec- tare, and on to real world situations. The fields will be irregular, there will be obstacles, undu- lating land and pathways. Precision Decisions will be handling vehicle and data management through the MiFarm platform.
The Hands Free Hectare (HFHa), a project run by Harper Adams University and Precision Decisions, a Map of Ag company, has received funding from Innovate UK to create a Hands Free Farm.
Testbed for farm innovation Kit Franklin, Senior Agricultural Engineering Lecturer: “We want to become a testbed. Once the farm is established, we will be encourag- ing companies to come and test and evaluate their technologies. It is also great that the pro- ject will remain on the university campus, so that students will be able to learn from it.” Professor James Lowenberg-DeBoer will be conducting an economic output study in rela- tion to the project. And in the final year of the project, alongside being run at the university, the system will be evaluated by partner farm- er David Blacker. Callum Chalmers, Business Development
Manager for Farmscan AG said: “We are hop- ing to expand on the great foundations the HFHa laid, by integrating our existing industry proven technology with a developing autono- mous platform to provide precision control across the farm. Our goal is to have multiple small unmanned vehicles working together seamlessly in the same fields, all remotely monitored and completing all the tasks you would expect in a commercial farm. Navigat- ing roads and pathways between fields is an exciting new challenge; we want to face real world conditions, where fields are not often in one place and it is a necessity to travel b etween them.”
Team members from Harper Adams University: Mike Gutteridge, Jonathan Gill and Kit Franklin with their new automated vehicles.
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 27 August 2019 21
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