One robot makes the difference
A small Waikato dairy farm with one Lely Astronaut A4 robot has proven that robotic milking is also effective with a small herd.
Hot on the heels of a Rural News article outlining a prototype developed by Pastoral Robotics (Rural News, October 22 – see panel), AgResearch put out a media release profiling its Agri-Rover project.
Project leader Andrew Manderson says the media release was to gain farmer feedback on where the work goes next in preparation for the next funding bid. “The feedback we’ve had so far has been absolute gold,” Manderson
told Dairy News.
Farmer input has already been instrumental in keeping the rover design effective, affordable and robust, he adds.
“It’s a battery and solar powered unit running four 240v gear motors that cranks along at about 5km/h, goes up and down 15-20o slopes and spins on a dime.
“It’s tough as well. We accidently dropped it off the back of a ute and it fell on its lid. We just turned it over and away it went again.”
AgResearch’s team first presented the Agri-Rover concept at the Fertiliser and Lime Research Centre conference in February and have had a functional rover out in the paddock since April.
The concept is an all-weather machine that can operate at any time, day or night, deploying from a central base station to independently navigate to a paddock to take measurements and possibly making applications before automatically returning to the base station for recharging and further deployment.
A low profile means it can go under two-wire fences and gates so can move from paddock to paddock too if necessary.
“It’s designed to be easy to operate, and will report results as needed to a cellphone or computer,” Manderson says.
Ultimately farmers may be able to view images of cows, pasture or whatever they want the rover to focus on, on their televisions, he suggests.
The AgResearch team has used off-the-shelf technology to keep the rover affordable, the current model costing $4000-5000 to build. “The entire project’s operating budget is just under $20,000. The expensive part is going to be putting on the sensors.”
Manderson suggests optical pasture meters are likely to be the first tools deployed with robots such as the Agri-Rover, but electro-magnetic soil mapping to determine irrigation need/scheduling, soil sampling for fertiliser decisions, and urine patch identification are possible uses down the track.
In due course such machines may be able to make applications too. “While we can tow a sizeable spray unit, it is too big a drain on current battery life.”
Technology to identify and spot spray weeds – a tough task in the green-in-green pasture situation – is also being looked at.
To date the project’s been funded from AgResearch’s Curiosity Fund. Other Agresearch scientists are developing robots to herd cows in for milking.
