When Lazaros Nalpantidis sees a area, he imagines a future the place a fleet of small robots chugs alongside, tending and caring for the crops on their very own. Every machine has its personal job—they sow, take away weeds, verify for pests, water, spray pesticides and harvest.
And the fields look completely different. There aren’t any limitless rows of wheat, barley, and corn, however as an alternative many alternative crops—and the environment are buzzing with life.
Formed after machines
If we wish to enhance biodiversity, we should change our agriculture. In Denmark, agriculture takes up over 60% of our land and the overwhelming majority of the fields are monoculture, the place a single crop dominates massive areas. This creates unhealthy circumstances for biodiversity. However what if robots may change that?
“We have now formed the surroundings to our agricultural machines. However we will form the machines to the surroundings with robotic expertise,” says Lazaros Nalpantidis.
He’s a professor at DTU Electro and is heading the venture SAVA (Protected Autonomous Automobiles for Agriculture), which is able to develop protected agricultural robots that may work autonomously in a lot smaller areas than massive agricultural machines.
That may create fertile floor for a paradigm shift in agriculture and produce an finish to monoculture whereas nonetheless sustaining effectivity and yield.
The SAVA venture will take a look at security programs in numerous areas reminiscent of grass fields, parks, fruit orchards, and vineyards. This may occur in collaboration with numerous corporations creating agricultural machines. Picture credit score: AGCO
Monoculture is unhealthy information for biodiversity
Earlier than industrialization, it was frequent for farmers to develop a number of completely different crops on the identical area. However as machines took over handbook labour, it grew to become extra widespread to develop the identical crop on massive areas, because it made it simpler to plough, fertilize and harvest utilizing massive machines.
“Again within the day, it was essential to have a flexible farm with crop range to satisfy native wants, however after World Battle II the specialization of agriculture started to take maintain. That made economies of scale and monoculture attainable,” says Ane Kirstine Aare.
She’s assistant professor on the Division of Folks and Know-how at RUC and has performed analysis on transition in the direction of extra sustainable agriculture practices reminiscent of co-cultivation, the place a number of crops are grown on the identical area.
Agriculture grew to become extra environment friendly, however monoculture is unhealthy information for biodiversity. In nature, there are lots of completely different vegetation that bloom at completely different instances of the yr and a various cowl of timber, shrubs, grass and herbs that create habitats for plenty of animal species and all that disappears when the fields are uniform.
On the similar time, it additionally will increase the chance that the whole area will likely be affected by pests and ailments and thus the necessity for utilizing pesticides additionally will increase, which is hurting biodiversity.
“The issue is that we’ve developed a meals system that has been formed to suit monocultural practices. Most concerned events within the meals system have tailored to this follow, so it’s troublesome to alter course,” says Ane Kirstine Aare.
The Meals and Agriculture Group (FAO) of the UN has concluded in a report that monoculture in agriculture results in much less plant range and thus fewer ecosystem companies. There are fewer pollinators like bees, pests have fewer pure enemies, there are fewer microorganisms within the soil and fewer wild species of crops. The FAO factors out that one of many options is expertise that may have a constructive impact on biodiversity – and that is the place robots come into play.
All sensors on the desk
Robotic expertise is slowly making its manner into agriculture – there are already robots that may take away weeds (together with the Galirumi robot the place DTU was concerned), spray with pesticide, and harvest sure crops. The event is making fast headway, however there are nonetheless only a few agricultural robots in the marketplace. In response to Statistics Denmark, only one% of Danish farms use self-driving machines or robotic expertise, and the expertise has not but matured sufficient for the robots to run absolutely autonomously, so it’s necessary that an individual supervises them.
“If the farmer has to stick with the robotic, you’re not gaining a lot from it,” says Lazaros Nalpantidis.
The issue is that the robots are nonetheless not able to dealing with unexpected obstacles reminiscent of individuals, animals, and rocks, however the SAVA venture goals to unravel that. Lazaros Nalpantidis and his colleagues will take a look at a variety of latest sensor applied sciences that may enhance security in order that the robots will be absolutely unleashed within the fields.
“We have now to place all of the toys on the desk and see if it opens up some new prospects,” says Lazaros Nalpantidis.
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