PHOTOS: BOB KARSTEN
AUTONOMISATION ▶▶▶ Learning the in’s and out’s H BY BOB KARSTEN
uizingHarvest in Emmen in the Dutch province of Drenthe bought a tracked combine harvester with- out having a single telephone call
or verbal contact with the Chinese manufac- turer. They simply did an internet search, and bought it via
Alibaba.com and WhatsApp. “And four weeks later it drove out of a shipping con- tainer here,” grins company founder and owner Nico Huizing. He had seen one of these com- bines at work in Cambodia, and was enthralled by it. The machine is lightweight, particularly easy to use, and it runs on tracks. What is more, the brand colours perfectly match the compa- ny’s own corporate colours. “It was quite tense to transfer € 15,000 over to China, but fortu- nately it is here,” says Huizing.
Keeping expertise in house HuizingHarvest will convert the machine itself into an automised combine harvester, purely to learn from it. After all, the best way to learn is to simply start working with it, reasons Hui- zing. “I sometimes ponder about what our work will look like in five or ten years’ time. I genuinely expect to see growth in autono- mous machinery due to a major shortage of drivers, which is why we want to get ahead of the curve and learn about this technology now. Just last week, an Australian crop farmer said, ‘when you have that autonomous combine harvester commercially available, I will order
HuizingHarvest wants to know the do’s and don’ts when automatising agricultural machinery. They decided to find out by turning a conventional harvester into an autonomous one themselves. So the company bought a cheap Chinese machine on the Alibaba website and is now refitting it.
ten of them’. That is not our aim as such, but it does indicate how significant the problem is in some parts of the world. I have seen it in many places, there are no drivers to be found.” Hui- zingHarvest knows all about it. The company specialises in providing support to large-scale agricultural businesses: recruitment, mechan- ics’ work, on-site support for manufacturers, and arranging seasonal employment.
No information available HuizingHarvest’s workshop is used for carrying out modifications. The Chinese model is there too, disassembled in the corner. Three men are working on it, in between their other activities, and today it is Thijs Hidding’s turn. “The Chi- nese company was unwilling to give us any in- formation in advance, because they were afraid that we wanted to copy their product,” he laughs. When the men rolled the combine out of its container, it turned out that it was entirely mechanically operated. Literally en- tirely. The small axial threshing drum is activat- ed simply by tightening a drive belt. The team has since fitted some of the unwieldy
levers with electrically operated cylinders. The present valve block is now being taken apart, and its (electronic) replacement is waiting on the workbench. The combine will soon drive to and from a plot through a remote control. The mechanics have also fitted emergency stops to the machine. It all works, but there is still much to be done: this year, HuizingHarvest wants the machine to drive autonomously, turn on the headland, set the harvester head height it- self, and stop before obstacles. The harvester head therefore still requires position detectors and sensors. The rest will follow next year. “Ul- timately, of course, the machine is not required to stop before an object but steer around it. And we will still do the unloading manually this year,” explains Huizing. “We will not have to worry about machine settings yet. Just look at state-of-the-art combines, they are doing most things themselves already.” There is little to adjust on the Chinese combine in any case. There is a small axial threshing drum, but the harvesting specialists will still upgrade that. Their tracked combine is suitable for rice, but absolutely not for barley. There is a small
Tightening a drive belt activating the threshing drum. The two cables control a brake, which steers the harvester.
30 ▶ FUTURE FARMING | 27 August 2019
The harvester has all mechanical controls. This means that each lever has to be fitted with electrically operated cylinders.
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