FIELD ROBOT ▶▶▶
weed has been sprayed over and over.” Farm- ers can then take different action. “It might be time to do some strategic killing of weeds there. For instance, you can get those weeds a bit lower in the ground, so they won’t be a continuous problem.” “What we are finding, is that a lot of growers are trying to be more efficient with their trac- tors and man hours. When a system is not ty- ing up a man and hours on the tractor then it’s not an issue, you can be a lot more efficient with these smaller spraying systems on the back of a robot.” The precision ag specialist points out that the robot can make many hours without any problem. “It has an onboard weather station. If it gets to windy or is too hot, or if it is anywhere outside of the parame- ters that the grower has set, it will just stop. But if the conditions are right, the machine will be ready to go and keep on spraying.”
SwarmFarm looks at new ways to kill weeds
SwarmFarm is looking into using new tech- nologies for killing weeds. “We have been playing with both microwave weed killing and the mechanical chipping of weeds”, says SwarmFarm CEO Andrew Bate. “Whilst they are not commercially released yet, those are the next things for us.” Andrew expects that microwave weed killing will come available in about one year. “It will not be able to kill everything but it will be particularly useful with double knocks and hard to kill weeds.” The SwarmFarm CEO anticipates spot tilling or individual weed chipping to be used soon. “That will be available even sooner than mi- crowave technology. We will work together with partners in these new technologies.” Bate has been farming for over 20 years, and started SwarmFarm 4 years ago to develop au- tonomous technology for agriculture. “We farm ourselves and we think about ways we can fit technology into farming, rather than trying to automate agriculture”, he emphasises. He has been using a SwarmFarm robot with a WEED-IT system on his own farm for a while now. “We wanted to take the weight of our paddocks. We‘re finding we are getting far less soil com- paction. The super compaction we had on our
36 Need to know
▶ Robot spraying frees up a man and a tractor ▶ SwarmFarm robot saves on water and chemicals ▶ Works virtually a full day without refilling ▶ Identifying weed spots where resistance to chemicals seem to grow ▶ Other technologies can also be built on robot
The smaller boom size also gives the advan- tage of being more accurate. “Because it is go- ing slower, it can do a better job of detecting weeds. It is also going to apply more chemicals and a higher water rate to those weeds. That will lead to better coverage, and at the end of the day to better weed control. And we‘re find- ing that we are doing a much better job at controlling hard to kill weeds”, he says. The wa- ter savings are impressive as well, a 90% saving on water use. “Other conventional sprayers
would use ten thousands of litres to do a spray. We are looking at a thousand litre tank cover- ing several hundred hectares.” There are other cost savings, Jeremy points out. “Of cause there are the costs and the lease of the robot, but you are not tying up a tractor. You are not hiring someone to step in the seat. There are a lot of other benefits than just the initial chemi- cal savings. Everybody knows the importance of time management, and this gives you one less job to worry about...”
CEO Andrew Bate of SwarmFarm Robotics: “We are less focussed on how many hectares we can do in a day.”
tram lines affected the crops inside of the tracks.” The SwarmFarm robot is only one tenth of the weight of a traditional sprayer machine. He has also changed his views on agronomy. “We are less focussed on how many hectares we can do in a day, more on how many parcels we can do in one season. We have changed our chemical use pattern and also our rotation. We are using less residuals and more knock downs. We are ro- tating through chemical groups more often. We
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 1 november 2019
are killing the weeds when they are small rather than waiting for the traditional time to spray af- ter rain events. That’s letting us tackle those hard to kill weeds.” SwarmFarm Robotics has about thirty robots on order, mainly in Austral- ia. “We have built robots for spraying, spread- ing and mowing, and are presently working on a fertiliser spreader. It’s still early days with ro- botics and we can’t do everything, but we are starting to do some things now and it’s real...”
PHOTO: SWARMFARM ROBOTICS
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