With the start of summer, the spring season has come to an end. Which also means a time to reflect for farmer Marijn Vermuë on his trial AgBot 5.115T2. The AgBot has been flail mowing, preparing seedbeds and potato ridging the past months. Read all about his experience when using the AgBot, and to what extent can a robot replace a conventional tractor with driver?
In case you missed it, ‘Robot seeks Farmer‘ is a project of NPPL, where farmers try out an autonomous agricultural machine for a year. Farmer Marijn Vermuë, based in the Netherlands, has been selected to use the AgBot 5.115T2 and share his thoughts and experiences. If you want to read more about the project, see our latest article or read about it on NPPL’s website.
The AgBot T2 proved most effective at preparing land for planting. On flat fields without plow furrows, it works just as efficiently, and almost as fast, as a conventional tractor with a driver. However, unexpected conditions are challenging for the AgBot, in which a driver could react to the situation. Koen van Boheemen from Wageningen University says that this is a part of the natural adaption process where the robot is not adapted to the farm management but:
‘You would have to approach it differently: adapting the farm management to suit the robot.’
When comparing the robot with a driver, there is a big advantage when using a robot. You can put the agronomy as the number one priority, even if the working patterns are uncomfortable for a driver. For example, tilling diagonally instead of in the right direction along the rows often gives a better result, like guaranteeing an even field surface. However, this operation requires frequent turning and lots of bumps which is quite uncomfortable for a driver on a tractor.
Marijn Vermuë :
‘If there are a thousand possible occurences during operations, I get the impression that for 980 of them, a solution within the software of the robot already exists that I don’t even know about. The remaining 20 will cause an error.’
One of those 20 occurrences would be when the radiator got full because of a large amount of uprising dust during flail mowing. Vermuë called AgXeed for a reversing fan. Luckily, AgXeed only had to direct Vermuë to the right button in the Portal.
Read more about Vermuë’s experiences with the AgBot T2 here
Vermuë would have loved to do more operations with his AgBot T2, like sowing beets. More tasks coming up from late June: cultivation, stubble tillage, and possibly seeding cover crops with a rotary harrow. Stay tuned for more work done by Vermuë through our website and our social media channels!
