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5 2 7 How a combine with an artifi cial brain works
A combine is like a factory on wheels. Its per- formance is affected by its design, threshing conditions, and crop characteristics. The com- bine has numerous variables that affect threshing quality and capacity, including travel speed, reel speed (1) and height, cut- ting height (2), the speed of the threshing drum (3) and its distance from the thresher cover (4), the wind speed (5) through the sieve (6) and the sieve openings. In modern combines, the driver can change all of these settings from a terminal in the cabin.
The optimum settings are a complex inter- play of all threshing functions and the chang- ing threshing conditions. If the latter, in par- ticular, are changeable during threshing, for example the moisture content of the straw, adjusting the settings is a considerable chal- lenge, even for experienced drivers. With the advent of artificial intelligence and computer vision, all of these threshing functions can now be controlled automatically and in real time. Using cameras (7) in the elevator to the grain tank and above the straw walkers (8),
Hiring out artificial brains Robovision hires out its artificial mini-brains to companies and as- sists with training and installing them. The way in which those companies pass on the cost of hiring to their customers depends on the situation. “A large tulip grower in the Netherlands, for exam- ple, pays us a licence fee per bulb for our artificial brains in the planting robot. The combine manufacturer will have to include the hire costs one way or another in the purchase price of its machines. Maybe as a subscription, similar to those offered by smartphone app providers.” Robovision does not wish to disclose the name due to competition considerations. One combine manufacturer is John Deere, the world’s largest manufacturer of agricultural machinery but, since it bought the Blue River Technology company in 2017, it has got AI and machine-learning expertise in house. Jonathan recognises that independents such as Robovision risk suffering the same fate as Blue River Technology, which means that all AI technology will end up in the hands of a few large mul- tinationals. “If you consider how powerful Amazon and various large Chinese corporations have become, that can’t be a positive development,” he muses, “also because of how much political effort it takes to curb the power of large high-tech companies.”
deep neural networks (9) are able to continu- ously monitor the quality of the grain and an- alyse losses, and subsequently optimise all of the combine’s settings. The concept of an AI-optimised combine allows the driver to download an optimally trained mini-brain for any crop from a cloud-based platform (10). These mini-brains are continuously updated with experience data from across the world. This means that a cereal farmer in Canada can benefit from the experience gained during threshing in Australia.
AI creates diversity in agriculture Understandably, Berte is keen to emphasise how much agricul- ture will benefit from AI: “One of the best things about it is that you no longer need to be a smart software engineer to automate your machinery, tractors or implements. You just need to give the artificial mini-brain a little help at the start by training it in basic tasks, and it doesn’t matter where you do that. For example, the mini-brain we provided for a cutting planter at a Dutch chrysan- themum grower was trained by Syrian refugees who have settled in Belgium. They were able to do the job by indicating on the photos the optimum ‘grab target’ for the robot.” Berte also believes that intelligent machinery will contribute to greater diversity in what is currently large-scale, monoculture farming: “With AI-controlled autonomous field robots, crop farm- ers will soon be able to sow and cultivate a variety of crops with greater ease and efficiency, or grow a niche product with specific consumer requirements. What’s more, consumers will be able to view all the data that prove that your vegetables were grown in harmony with nature.”
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 22 May 2020
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