AgRobotics’ AutoProbe was a dream come true for Scott McKee.
The chief executive officer of A&L Soil Labs in Memphis, Tennessee, had been talking with his staff about how they might develop a GPS-driven robotic automatic soil sampling machine to make sampling easier.
“Then all of a sudden these guys from Arkansas showed up here with their invention,” McKee said.
“They had just gone ahead and flat out built the very machine we were already talking about. I just got back yesterday (April 15) from watching the machine at some field demos in California. It’s an ingenious piece of engineering. And it really works.”
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He estimated the new probe is 10 times faster than a conventional probe mounted on a truck and will probably allow an operator to take 10 times as many cores in a day.
McKee said mechanical automation removes the human fatigue factor from sampling.
As long as the operator can drive the utility vehicle, every sample from morning until night will be consistent and from the same depth.
He said 20 cores per grid are far better than most people deliver.
“A lot of guys, when they’re doing sampling, will drive to the centre of the grid and just take one big sample, especially later in the afternoon,” he said.
“The machine gives us 20 uniform cores per grid. The result is a more accurate fertilizer recommendation and better use of your fertilizer dollar.”
McKee said he and Jeff Burton of AgRobotics are talking about how A&L and AgRobotics can work together to expand the probe’s use.
“What we want to do is ride along on their success wagon because they have the technology. And Jeff says they want to ride along on our wagon because of our reputation. But really, we’re in this together.”
McKee said he wants to improve the automated container and labelling system so that samples will move seamlessly from field to lab, improving turn around time for the results.
While AgRobotics is targeting producers of high-value crops such as fruit and vegetables, McKee said broad acre crops such as wheat and canola will benefit as well.
“I think this machine has a fit any place a farmer is doing some sort of precision agriculture or trying to do a better job of managing his fertility program.”
