FIELD ROBOTS MEET FARMERS’ MECHANICAL WEEDING NEEDS DURING THE CORONA PANDEMIC Written by Malene Conlong from the German Agricultural Society (DLG) The DLG Digital robot webinar explored mechanical weeding as alternative to herbicide: Field requirements, monitoring, wear parts, solar power and remote service.
commercial robots with the dual feature of seeding and weeding from the Danish company FarmDroid are already working on several European farms, having covered more than 1000 hectares in the Spring of 2020. Using high-precision geo coordinates to seed and weed, the robots are solar powered with a back-up battery and operate with 8 mm accuracy within and between rows, which means manual weeding is significantly reduced and in some cases not necessary at all"
As farmers around the world face challenges in the use of herbicides in crop production, autonomous robot, capable of mechanical weeding on the field, offers farmers an attractive alternative. At the online robot webinar “Robots for mechanical weeding” organized by The German Agricultural Society on 16th June 2020, international experts in field robots from academia, research and industry
Mechanical weeding offers a solution to farmers in a number of ways. “Either the herbicide does not work as well or is not allowed anymore or, in some cases, societal pressure means some products, like glyphosate, cannot be used anymore. This is where autonomous mechanical weeding could provide a key solution,” said Klaus Erdle, DLG Competence Center Agriculture, introducing the DLG
“As a fast response to the Covid-19 pandemic one customer even ordered a second robot”, says René Jannick Jørgensen, CEO of FarmDroid, which shows that mechanical weeding robots are already considered to be reliable workers, also in a crisis. The autonomous robot, which weighs some 700 kilos and has a working width of three metres, works both thoroughly and precisely at a steady pace of between 450 and 900 metres per hour. The FarmDroid can be
left in the field over the season and will carry out the work by itself through its connection with the RTK station.
discussed what is practically possible for farmers today, including using field robots during the Covid-19 pandemic.
72 DIRECT DRILLER MAGAZINE
Digital webinar.
FarmDroid Designed for fields of up to 20 hectares,
Arno Ruckelshausen, Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrueck, Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, Germany, noted that there are still legal and technical obstacles that need to be overcome ISSUE 11 | OCTOBER 2020
