New Zealand-based agritech company Robotics Plus has launched an autonomous multi-use, modular vehicle for agriculture that could revolutionize the industry by alleviating ongoing labor shortages and simplifying agricultural tasks,by a single human operator, using a combination of vision systems and other technologies to sense its environment. This empowers it to optimize tasks and allow intelligent and targeted application of inputs such as sprays.
“To adapt and thrive in a changing world and create a sustainable and competitive future in the agricultural and speciality tree crop sector - growers and orchardists need automation that solves real-world problems, reduces reliance on increasingly costly and hard-to-find machine operators and provides data-driven insights for informed decision-making.
One of the first case uses for the technology is intelligent spraying where the system intelligently varies the flow rate to ensure uniform and efficient output.Furthermore, the machine has a small footprint as it allows significantly more ground to be covered than machines which turn on every second row or greater. The robot can be deployed in a variety of applications in various crop types with a minimum row spacing of 1.8M/6ft.