June 2021

ROBOTICS n 43 www.drivesncontrols.com June 2021 controls of some robots, but the igus robots do not appear to suffer from this problem. Another attraction of the delta robots is that they are lubrication-free. This avoids the potential problem of lubricated moving parts such as belt drives and bearings becoming clogged with soil and water as they operate in muddy fields. “The kinematics of the delta makes it well suited to the end-effector and the belt drive means the zapper is always parallel to the ground below,” explains Angelos Bitivelias, an igus automation engineer who has worked with universities and industrial companies on other applications for delta robots for applications such as fruit picking. Massive potential Agriculture could become a massive market for industrial technologies such as robots. The potential for weedkilling machines alone is vast. There are only a few weeks in a year when the weeds are at the right stage to be eliminated. So if the robotic technology were to replace traditional herbicides on a large scale, many thousands of machines would be needed to cover as many farms as possible during the short zapping season. The Small Robot Company is planning to offer “weed-free fields” as a service, rather than selling its machines to farmers. More than 100 UK farmers, with 22,000 hectares of farmland, have already signed expressions of interest in the service which SRC hopes to roll out by 2023. Looking further ahead, it is hoping to be servicing 62,000 hectares in the UK, North America and South America by 2024. Globally, there are 177 million arable farms covering 6.2bn hectares which could eventually be farmed robotically. More immediately, a new generation version of the Tom machine is due to start trials in Dorset in the autumn, which will use 5G communications to upload the huge amount of data collected in real-time to the cloud. The machines will also be able to learn from each other, rather than working in isolation, saving time and cutting costs. It is thought that they will be will be the world’s first 5G-compatible agri-robots. SRC has formed an r&d relationship with the chip- maker Qualcomm, which will provide the 5G technologies for the trial. The 5G trial will form part of a £8m project called 5G RuralDorset, aimed at delivering a step-change in rural connectivity and agricultural productivity. The project, part- funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, will develop a blueprint for rural-optimised 5G connections. SRC – which now employs more than 40 people, half of them engineers – is looking at other potential high-tech applications in agriculture, including spot spraying and fertilising. In one pilot project called SlugBot, it is using hyper-spectral cameras mounted on a Tom machine to detect slugs at night, which are then treated biologically using microdoses of nematodes. SRC is also working on techniques to identify different species of weeds and crops, and has embarked on a project to detect disease in wheat. A trial is also underway using the Tom machine to take soil samples to asses soil health. Robotic monitoring could provide accurate, repeatable carbon measurements across farms, helping UK farmers to migrate towards net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Robots could again play a role in some of these activities. “The milestone we’ve hit is that we can now take action at the plant level,”says Andy Hall, SRC’s head of prototyping.“Using artificial intelligence, the robots can recognise the weeds in the shot and target the robotic arm onto those weeds. At that point we can do anything we want. Our robotic platform incorporating the igus arm could have many different technologies bolted on.” One company that has been taking part in the SRC trials is Waitrose. Andrew Hoad, a partner in the supermarket and head of its Leckford Estate farm, says that the technology “could be truly ground-breaking and has the potential to shape how we farm in the future. By helping us to be more precise and targeted in controlling weeds and managing pests, this next generation of farming robots could in turn help us protect biodiversity on our land and preserve the natural environment for future generations.” “To prove the power of per-plant farming, we are focusing on answering the biggest problem that farmers face at the moment which is weeding,” says the Small Robot Company’s CEO and co-founder, Ben Scott- Robinson. “We’ve now proved we can deliver per-plant weeding: a world first. The focus for us now is being able to move forward to deliver this, repeatedly, and at scale. This will be game-changing.” n A video of the SRC’s weed killing technology in action can be seen at https://vimeo.com/539270445 (password: small.demo) The SRC’s head of prototyping, Andy Hall, with the Dick weed-zapping machine An electrode on the end of a delta robot arm applies a high voltage precisely to a weed to kill it.