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Collaboration essential for successful agri-robotics

By: Eliot Dixon, Head of Engineering at Agri-EPI Centre

Robotics has several strong applications in agriculture, especially in scenarios where systems can enhance the productivity of a shrinking workforce or can offer production efficiencies to the farm. However, to be successful in these applications the systems created need be reliable, in terms of long-term physical robustness but also in the ability of their control software to handle the very wide variety of scenarios they will encounter in a farming environment. This means the robots must be both well designed and well tested to meet the needs of farmers. This includes a design which emphasises safety and reliability.

“Understanding user requirements and testing in-field is key”

Good design requires a deep understanding of the needs and requirements of farmers and their farming systems. This extends from the core values held by a farmer, such as safety, which dictate their decisions; through to very specific requirements created by the unique combination of their way of working and the land they work. If this understanding is not achieved for a farming system, then there is a very high chance that the eventual product will be unsuitable, either creating a failed product or a long development timeline to solve the deficiencies. Gaining this understanding should come through working with a wide variety of farms within the target market for the technology, not just a small handful. In many agricultural sectors this design stage is especially important due to the limited testing season and ability to iterate on the design.

Testing is also well understood to be important to creating a reliable product, and in agriculture this does require a close collaboration with farmers to ensure that the robot meets their needs. As these are complex machines, which are also often dangerous if not created with a strong safety process, the testing regime should also be rigorous enough to ensure that the system will function to the desired reliability for all the design requirements. A rigorous testing regime would usually require multiple tests for each requirement across multiple operational scenarios such as different weather conditions, soil types, dangers, failure modes, crops etc. Failure to complete this testing will certainly result in the robotic system encountering situations which it is unable to function within, which may create unfortunate repercussions for the user or manufacturer. Unfortunately, completing this massive number of tests requires a range of test facilities, some of which might be beyond the capability of a company focussing on a small range of agricultural applications.

In our 2021 hackathon we explore safety and security. Outcomes are discussed in our white paper here:

Hackathon white paper

As mentioned, good design and testing is essential to creating successful products, but this unfortunately comes with a high cost. Doing this for the wide range of complex operating scenarios in UK agriculture, as well as the short testing cycles, is driving up the cost of developing agricultural robots. There are a multitude of Agri-robotics companies in the UK creating their systems from almost the ground up, each of which are individually bearing the cost in time and money of this development. This creates barriers to adoption in terms of high costs, a limited set of operations which can be conducted by robots, or low reliability due to poor engineering, and is increasing the amount of time it takes for products to get to market. As in all development the saying “Good, Cheap, Fast. Pick two”, is very much in action here but some very pressing needs mean we must find ways to break that deadlock.

Collaboration enables future opportunities for robotic systems

The obvious solution for this deadlock is to massively increase collaboration between ag-robotics developers. This has been proposed for many years, but we are yet to see a viable solution to this. Direct collaboration is currently difficult for commercial reasons with developers competing for the same money, but also for technical reasons where it is challenging to share components between robots. Perhaps a solution for this is to build an ecosystem of adaptable, compatible, components and platforms which can be used to create a multitude of agricultural robotic systems. This ecosystem of components would also be able to be robustly tested to ensure reliability when integrated as part of a larger system. Thus, the costs of development would be increasingly shared, without any single robotics manufacturer losing income as they are all developing for specific agricultural niches. Using a set of well proven components would allow developers to focus on ensuring good understanding and design for specific problems in agriculture, while also allowing for easier integration and testing of the robots.

Robotics in agriculture is a promising field, and with the right design and testing, as well as collaboration between developers, it could be a great success. By understanding the needs and requirements of farmers and using that to create an ecosystem of components and platforms, robots can be developed which are high value, robust, reliable and safe. With the right approach, agricultural robotics could benefit farmers across the UK and worldwide. Read our robotics and automation article to understand more about how we can support you to develop a robust well tested solution through collaborative R&D today.

Agri-EPI expands robotics and data offering

Agri-EPI has developed its robotics and data offering, including the addition of 4 new members to their engineering team over the last couple of months.

Eliot Dixon, Head of Agri-Tech (Engineering) explains:

“Over the last few months Agri-EPI has been investing heavily in its engineering team, bringing on several new members, enabling us to offer a set of services to assist in the creation of agri-tech products. The team of platform and spectral imaging experts uses our fleet of sensors and specialist software to deliver a range of sensing products such as ground truthing for AI model generation, or the creation of digital twins. We are also now able to offer UAV and UGV platforms as a means to test novel sensors and end-effectors without the need for a bespoke vehicle. And through working closely with our innovation farm network, we are creating a heavily layered source of evidence for developers using our farm network to design and test their innovations.”

Agri-EPI’s new GIS Data Analyst, Yingwang Gao, majored in Agricultural Engineering, and has a PhD degree specialising in Hyperspectral Imaging Applications, as well as postdoc experience working as Research Associate. In addition to a strong academic background, he has accumulated several years of industrial work experience, mainly on spectral imaging systems, R&D, and spectral imaging data analysis in various application domains. He has a strong passion for remote sensing and photogrammetry. At Agri-EPI, he takes care of data acquisition and data processing from different types of sensors, including RGB, multispectral, hyperspectral, LiDAR, and GPR, to identify and map out features of interest in the agricultural sector, to help farmers with better decision-making in agricultural management.

Agri-EPI’s new R&D Equipment Technician, Aditya Jadhav, pursued his bachelors in aeronautical engineering, where he learned various aspects of flying machines. He set up an aeromodelling club with a few of his classmates where they designed, built and tested various configurations of small UAVs. The MSc program for Autonomous vehicle dynamics and control was structured for students to gain a deeper understanding of unmanned systems. Aditya was part of a group project that built a surveillance system with a swarm of autonomous drones, and an individual project sponsored by the Railway Safety and Standards Board which aimed to design and develop an autonomous vehicle which can operate in a station environment. The advancements in robotics and the urgent need of integrating robotics with sustainable agriculture were the driving forces for him deciding to work in the agri-tech sector. As the R&D Equipment Technician, Aditya looks after all the deployable assets that are in service to the company, which includes maintenance, asset tracking and deployment, and organising the logistics.

Panagis Tzivras, Agri-EPI’S new GIS Software Engineer, is a GIS expert with strong technical skills who is highly invested in programming. In his previous roles working with startups and the commercial sector, he was involved in data collection and extraction, maintaining data pipelines and building geospatial processes and automation updates. At Agri-EPI Centre he is helping to leverage the measurement resources of the centre to create high quality dataset and support systems. He is working on creating tools and code to enable the automation of data collection from a wide variety of sources available to Agri-EPI Centre.

Lastly, Aidan Robertson has joined the Agri-EPI Engineering team as their new Graduate Data Analyst. Aidan’s background is in mathematics, which he studied at University of Warwick for four years before looking for jobs related to data science. He is very pleased to be part of the Agri-EPI team in quite a varied role; so far, he has been working on projects related to the health and wellbeing of cows, specifically by reformatting farm datasets to be sent out for analysis. Soon, there are plans for him to begin a more ambitious project to develop a costings estimator for RAS in agriculture. This is a long-term task, but the ultimate goal would be to offer it as a service for farmers looking to introduce robotic systems into their farms. The most interesting part of agri-tech for Aidan is the data, and what it actually says about the performance of a system, as well as what can be done to help the problems being faced by the agri-tech sector at present.

International collaboration in agri-tech

Agri-EPI’s Business Development Manager, Duncan Ross, spoke at The Argentinian Embassy in London along with Agri-EPI Centre members: Ian Beecher-Jones from JoJo’s Vineyard, Marc Jones, Business Director at Antobot, and Emil Endres, Operations Engineer from Outfield Technologies, as part of the dissemination activity from the two Viticulture projects funded by Innovate UK and EIT Food.  They demonstrated the use of drone and robotic technology and the potential benefits to the viticulture sector to a delegation of visitors from the wine growing Mendoza region of Argentina, and the wider British Argentinian Chamber of Commerce. Agri-EPI’s Communications Officer, Tatiana Boyle, supported with the Spanish translation for the tech in viticulture video shown to the delegation.

This visit follows a trip to Argentina by Duncan and Agri-EPI’s Head of Crops, Claire Hodge, where they attended workshops related to the current state of UK Agri-Tech, and a conference on biofilms near Cordoba. They then travelled to Rosario to meet with numerous Agri-Tech businesses in the area to gain an understanding of Argentinian Agri-Tech, before finally visiting “Glimax” a company that researches and validates Agri-Tech from all parts of the globe to make tech adoption recommendations to their farmer clients in the agronomy side of their business.

Duncan said:

“This was a fantastic opportunity facilitated by the Department of International Trade, to build on the links we are developing with Argentinian contacts both in the UK and in country. I envisage future opportunities for Argentinian Agri-Tech companies to use Agri-EPI Centre hubs as landing pads, and for UK Agri-Tech companies to explore opportunities abroad.”

 

         

Hyperspectral UAV

Agri-EPI Centre has invested in the Hyperspectral UAV.

Compared to multispectral imagery, hyperspectral imagery measures energy in narrower and more numerous bands, thus giving much more information on target. Hyperspectral image data is 3D cube, where each pixel holds a full spectrum across the range. Since spectra are as unique as ‘fingerprints’ to target, hyperspectral imagery can unveil features that multispectral imagery may miss out on.

Hyperspectral imaging technology has been under research for decades and has been demonstrated to be very powerful in many application areas including agriculture. Especially in recent years, with a more robust and rugged imaging product embedded onto the UAV platform, agri-tech has seen revolutionary improvements.

The HySpex turnkey UAV solution with Mjolnir VS-620 and Lidar includes all the necessary hardware and software for flight planning, data collection, data processing and calibration. The system is provided with a UAV platform, 3-axis gimbal mount for the hyperspectral unit with Lidar and corresponding spectral calibration, radiometric calibration and geometric calibration. The geometric calibration includes a sensor model for VNIR and SWIR hyperspectral sensor heads, subpixel co-alignment of the 2 sensor heads, boresight calibration of the 2 sensor heads and internal IMU system, boresight calibration of the Lidar unit and internal IMU system.

There’s a broad application potential, including assisting in the development of products in the following application areas:
• Drought/water/nutrient stress monitoring
• Plant pathogens detection
• Analysis of soil properties/Determination of soil types
• Land mapping
• Yield forecasting
• Land management

UAV System (XQ-1400S BFD HySpex Edition):
1. <25 kg MTOW with Mjolnir and gimbal
2. Up to 25 min flight endurance with 8 kg payload
3. Fitted with high performance GNSS/GPS and IMU to enable data to be captured to high geolocation accuracy
4. Fitted with advanced 3-axis digital gimbal to compensate for the pitching

Sensing System (HySpex Mjolnir VS-620, Velodyne VLP-32C) :
1. Fully-integrated co-aligned hyperspectral visible and near-infrared (VNIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) (400 – 2500nm) and LiDAR sensors, along with in-flight data capture and storage system
2. Spectral coverage of 400 – 2500 nm, with spectral resolution of 3 nm in VNIR and 5.1 nm over SWIR range. Bit resolution 12bit in VNIR and 16 bit in SWIR.
3. Double resolution data in the VNIR range
4. High-resolution (0.33 degree) LiDAR sensor, with 360° surround view with real-time 3D data

They Hyperspectral UAV has potential use as groundtruth technology for other technologies/systems as well.

For information on renting out our technical assets please contact team@agri-epicentre.com

Multi-sensor VTOL UAV

Agri-tech has undergone tremendous improvements with the introduction of remote sensing technologies, making many agricultural properties that were difficult to achieve before now accessible.

Multi-Spectral imaging has been widely used on satellites (e.g. Landsat) for earth observation science at a global scale. In the agricultural domain, UAVs as a platform have played a major role utilising various payload sensors including multi-spectral imaging.

The advantage of multi-spectral imaging is that it extends human sight sensitivity beyond the visible spectrum. Some wavelengths that are widely recognised for applications, such as the normalised difference vegetative index (NDVI), can be deployed into multi-spectral imaging. Nonetheless, it has been proved to be very useful in many other fields, greatly empowering the advancement of agriculture. The adoption of UAVs has made it possible to achieve large-scale mapping and thus better agricultural management.

Agri-EPI Centre has invested in the Multi-spectral VTOL UAV which has a potential use as ground truth technology for other technologies and/or systems.

This UAV and sensing payload system can also be used for a variety of fruit orchard use-cases which include:
• Estimation of leaf area index
• Estimation of canopy volume
• Estimation of water stress
• Fruit biomass estimation
• Temperature variation across the orchard
• Temperature variation of specific plants over time
• Fruit count estimation

It can also be used in other agricultural areas which include:
• Pest infestation detection
• Quantity moisture levels
• Analyse wildlife damage
• Vegetation index creation like NDVI
• Crop counting
• Create 3D photogrammetry maps

For information on renting out our technical assets please contact team@agri-epicentre.com.

Drone use in UK agriculture

By: Claire Hodge, Head of Crops at Agri-EPI Centre

Agricultural drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are set to disrupt the agriculture industry owing to their immense potential to make agriculture more efficient, precise, and productive, driving the economic case for drone use. With farmers grappling with mounting pressure to boost production while adapting to climate change and dealing with increasing costs of production and changing support frameworks, drones present a compelling solution to improve the efficiency of the entire farming enterprise.

Growers and their advisors can exploit the technology for data collection to identify stressed areas of crops, study and map farmland, and improve irrigation efficiency. In addition to spraying water, fertilisers or pesticides on crops, drones can be used for livestock monitoring and tracking animal population and health.

Increased efficiency will drive the economic case for drone use. Drones can cover large areas of land, quickly and efficiently, provide quick and low-cost farm-related data to assist in effective decision making, and improve yield estimations, helping growers efficiently plan for storage, labour, farm resources, and transportation requirements with more certainty about the quality and quantity of the fruit crop being produced. Drones provide a higher level of accuracy, potentially reducing the frequency and quantity of agrochemicals used.

Labour shortages are a big challenge with the changing roles on farm, and through automation, drones allow labour to be redeployed to other farm operations. Making these jobs safer by reducing exposure to chemicals using drones to spray crops means that fewer staff will be exposed to chemicals compared to manual spraying.

The environmental impact of food production is under scrutiny and drones can help farmers reduce food waste by improving crop quality, reducing inputs and lowering CO2 emissions. The addition of drones in fields should also reduce the travel of heavy equipment going through the field on such a regular basis.

Precision agriculture practices, which can help farmers make better-informed decisions, have evolved significantly over recent years, with the global market now estimated to reach $43.4 billion by 2025. While drones have not yet made it into the mainstream agriculture space, they are playing an increasingly important role in precision farming, helping agriculture professionals lead the way with sustainable farming practices, while also protecting and increasing profitability.

The demand for agriculture drone services is consistently growing around the world, particularly Asia, South America, and Australia. Drone service providers are offering advanced solutions with improved quality and in-depth analysis, spurring service adoption. The demand for agriculture drones for mapping and spraying is substantially growing among the services, in areas of extensive production, remote locations, and low populations where access is difficult.

The landscape in the UK certainly differs to that of extensive cropping systems with many UK farmers working close to highly populated areas and with that comes a different set of risk factors to overcome.

Working closely with farmers across the Agri-EPI network and setting up a suite of drone capabilities we understand the true industry needs and the current limiting factors. Farmers want more robust and detailed crop data that will inform their decision making, however regulatory limiting factors for flying drones on farms, skills required to operate drones, and time involved are all concerns that need to be overcome to see this technology gain widespread adoption.

Working at Agri-EPI gives me the opportunity to work with farmers, regulators, and technology developers to overcome these challenges helping create innovative solutions for on-farm drone deployment.

Within the Agri-EPI network we are working with the top fruit industry, to use cutting-edge drone and machine learning technologies to provide growers with detailed crop insights, using drones with multi-spectral, hyper-spectral or lidar sensors with the aim to increase productive yield from an orchard by 10%.

To overcome the need for training on farm we are working with companies who can deliver ‘drone in a box’ systems where the drone arrives on farm ready to use, designed specifically for the farm needs. Drone in a box service that will allow a grower to remotely trigger a pre-planned drone flight will increase adoption rates.

There are also advantages to the use of BVLOS (Beyond VLOS) flights where one drone and operator can cover much larger areas in a shorter time, something which can be done cost-effectively by a service provider. Current Visual Line of Site VLOS operations are only within 500m. BVLOS (Beyond VLOS) allow the operator to be in an entirely different place to the drone and allow them to cover the last areas without having people on the ground to monitor.

There is ongoing work with HSE and the wider industry to start to answer some of the questions in Spray drone technology in order to implement greater safety measures and improved accuracy. This will allow areas that need low volumes of spray to be targeted and will allow for advantages when traveling across the ground is difficult or remote.

Drone technology is not a solo technology to overcome all on-farm challenges, but part of an integrated solution complimenting satellite and robotic technology and existing farm practice – allowing farmers to pick applications that work for their business.