SwarmFarm robots have a lot in common with their cousin HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Try to trick them with slanted weather info and they’ll bite you.
Spray? Don’t Spray? The opportunity to fudge weather data when setting up is a temptation for some operators.
You have been warned: Don’t play with weather triggers when setting up a SwarmFarm robot. It will catch you with your pants down every time.
SwarmFarm inventor Andrew Bate explains why.
“Each platform has it’s own independent onboard weather station. You dial in the conditions you want for shut down and start up again: humidity, wind speed, wind direction, temperature.”
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He is also working to take it one step further by getting authorization to let the robots use all the parameters on the chemical label.
“Feed that data into the robot and let the robot make the decisions,” he said. “Take it out of human hands. It won’t let you override the label.
“It will log every drop of spray that gets sprayed from that robot. It tells you this drop was sprayed on this 10-centimetre square at 3 a.m. and here were the environmental conditions at that time and the spray pressure and everything else you need to know.”
The SwarmFarm platforms are all basically the same. A machine can be ordered with a variety of axle widths, ground clearance heights and custom modifications for each type of implement. For spraying in grain, all units are 86 horsepower. Boom width ranges from 12 to 24 metres.
They are typically equipped with Weed-It control technology. Cost to rent such a platform is about $77,000 for 10,000 hours. Prices go up from there, depending on options.
“It’s a three-year operating lease,” Bate said. “For that three-year period we provide comprehensive maintenance and technical support.”
Farmers are responsible for flat tires and oil changes, but SwarmFarm covers everything else, including electrical, hydraulic and the company’s part of the electronic components.
“We design everything to last at least 10,000 hours without failures,” he said. “We say it’s autonomous but it would not be very autonomous, would it now, if we had to drive out to fix it? At the end of 10,000 hours, it’s time to turn it over for a new machine. It’s like a 4,000-hour tractor. It’s reached the end of its working life.”
Bates has visited Western Canada to scope out conditions here. One of SwarmFarm’s investors suggested it would be a good fit.
“Australia has a lot in common with Canada, so that’s certainly something we will consider in the next 12 months.”
