Queensland University of Technology is investigating robotic technologies as a new generation of tools for site-specific crop and weed management. Tristan Perez described “AgBot”, a platform currently being manufactured to a design by QUT. AgBot is 2m long, 3m (adjustable) wide and 1.4m high.
Tristan suggests the use of a swarm of small light robots, that operate at lower speeds and have a suit of sensor-acting devices, could lead to a better application of agrochemicals. He also sees them having a key role addressing herbicide resistance as they could enable use of mechanical or microwave weed destruction techniques.
Now we have your attention:
LandWISE’s Dan Bloomer attended the 17th Precision Agriculture Symposia of Australasia in Adelaide. This event is a collaboration between SPAA and the University of Sydney, bringing together researchers and practitioners with the aim of promoting the development of PA to profit agricultural production.
The Symposium has a broad coverage including new technologies, big data, precision cropping and viticulture and spatially enabled livestock management.
As well as an excellent range of speakers, the symposium is a very good networking opportunity for people active in this space. There is a close alignment with LandWISE interests and the supporting Trade Displays were very relevant and informative
Link to the Symposium page here>
A few notes about some of the other presentations:
Lucas Haag, Professor at Kansas Sate University and Partner and agronomist in his family’s large farming operation, described the evolution of PA in the dryland environment of the US High Plains. While a very different context to New Zealand agriculture, the lessons appear readily transferable.
He noted the critical role of autosteer, rather than yield mapping, in accelerating the adoption of precision agriculture tools among a wide spread of cropping farmers, and the subsequent search by those farmers to gain additional return on that significant investment. This is a pattern very familiar to us.
A take home message from Lucas was the use of PA technologies to make better whole field or whole farm analysis and decisions. While they use PA tools to help evaluate new varieties, seed treatments and other new product options, machinery management decisions have added considerable value to their business.
Examples included evaluating the economics of grain stripper versus conventional header harvesting, grain cart logistics and the value of a dedicated tender truck to support spraying operations – all applications that were not anticipated. Better telematics and machine monitoring technologies and costs of machinery suggest this will continue to be an area of focus.
Miles Grafton from the New Zealand Centre for Precision Agriculture at Massey University discussed ballistic modelling of spread patterns from fertiliser spreaders. LandWISE has a particular interest in this due to our current SFF Project on Fertiliser Applicator Calibration. Miles and Ian Yule have already been giving support for the project.
As manufacturers have increased claims of spreading width, and farmers and contractors have increased bout widths accordingly, arable farmers have noted increased striping and lodging in crops where blended fertilisers are applied. The Massey studies identify the different ballistic properties of blend components, and the increased bout widths, explain these symptoms.
A number of presentations included reference to UAV technologies. Some are very sophisticated and used to carry very high-spec sensors. Some are just used to get up above the crop for a new perspective. Regardless, the potential benefits are clear and the price dropping and capability rapidly rising.
Luke Schelosky of RoboFlight Australia their approach using either piloted or unpiloted aerial vehicles to capture ultra-high resolution imagery create 2 cm resolution maps. As we have seen before, the key to the technology is the processing software rather than the choice of vehicle.
Miles Grafton also reported Massey work using remote sensing for pasture management. They use a number of Remote Piloted Aerial Systems (RPAS) including multi-rotor (e.g. QuadCopter) and fixed wing (e.g. Trimble UX5) as well as a range of multi- and hyper-spectral sensors and imaging systems. While at an early stage, Massey research is showing promise in remotely sensing pasture quantity and quality, including assessing pasture nutrient levels.
Lucas Haag also discussed the role of UAVs, suggesting three unique features create special potential:
- Temporal Resolution -The data are fresh, not from the last cloud free satellite pass
- Spatial Resolution – the user can control flight height and pattern to gain the redolution needed for the intended use of the data
- A separate step – because it requires a separate trip to the field, there is opportunity to add external knowledge before inputs are applied. This allows, for example, adding historical yield monitor knowledge (and perhaps knowledge of herbicide mistakes) to UAV NDVI imagery when creating a Nitrogen application map.
Lucas further addressed spatial and temporal variability measures determined from Yield Maps, contrasting Normalised Yield and Yield Stability. Multi-year Normalised Yield provides the measure of Spatial Variability or spatial yield potential, and the standard deviation (defined perhaps as stable high, stable low and unstable yield) provides a measure of temporal (over time) variability.
Cheryl McCarthy presented crop sensing and weed detection work being undertaken at the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture at the University of Southern Queensland. Colour and depth image analysis is enabling them to identify weeds in real time, and spot spray them at 10 – 15 km/h. Interesting to note this requires analysis of 30 images per second, as at least three image frames per plant are needed for sufficient confidence.
Two Trade Displays that caught attention were SST Software and PA Source; both aimed at helping farmers and their advisors access the benefits of Precision Agriculture.
Mark Pawsey demonstrated SST Software’s Sirrus programme, a cloud based data access, storage and analysis package. Of additional interest was their decision to open their agX Platform to other developers creating supplementary apps. This reflects the opening also of the John Deere platform and similar moves by other organisations.
Ben Jones of PA Source spoke at LandWISE in 2012 and has facilitated our use of that platform for supply and analysis of spatial data including yield maps, EM maps and satellite data. New offerings include www.watch.farm and www.pastack.com.
Watch.farm delivers Landsat satellite sourced vigour maps to your email every 16 days (cloud cover permitting). Part of the watch.farm package includes change maps, so you can track growth change in individual paddocks. We want to try this service in the current summer season and see it having a significant role to play if the resolution coverage is satisfactory in the “Land of the Long White Cloud”.
PAStack also uses Landsat imagery, “stacking” images from as far back as 1999 to 2013 to see which areas provide more or less biomass and how consistent they are. We will also investigate this product as there appear to be a number of uses of potential benefit to LandWISE farmers and their supporters.