Hosted in conjunction with the University of Hohenheim, the 2014 Field Robot Event will take place during the DLG Field Days exhibition, to be held at the grounds of DLG´s International Crop Production Centre on June 17 to 19 in Bernburg-Strenzfeld, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The event will also be supported by the Claas Foundation, European Society of Agricultural Engineers (EurAgEng), Hochschule Anhalt and several industrial sponsors.
Teams of students from all over Europe will be exhibiting and demonstrating their self-developed autonomous field robots, competing with one another over a series of routine tasks in a bid to be crowned ´top robot´.
As well as being an open-air contest that evaluates technological skill, the contest also provides a great opportunity for like-minded engineers to meet, exchange ideas and build the possibility for collaboration in future projects.
The contest, which is in its 12th year, shows the growing importance of using robots in agriculture and has itself become a significant international event.
The Field Robot Event shows a vision of the future of modern precision agriculture. A new breed of robots will soon be able to carry out a variety of tasks in row crops, such as weeding, spraying and disease Monitoring. This event aims to show that completely autonomous robots can and will be able to work in the field in the near future.
During previous events, the conducted tasks have always had something to do with crops grown in rows and once again the 2014 competition will focus on row crops, with maize as the chosen species.
Five tasks are designed to challenge the different abilities of the robots in terms of sensing, navigation and actuation. The first two will involve basic and advanced navigation, intended to show that robots can achieve accurate and fast navigation between rows.
During task three, the agricultural application will be visible and this year it will involve robots detecting weed plants and creating weed maps using positional information. In task four, the teams will be asked to show how their robots can work together to show cooperative abilities. In the past, it is this function that has been particularly interesting, both for research and industry.
For the final task 5 the teams are invited to let their robots perform a freestyle operation. Creativity and fun is required for this task as well as an application-oriented performance.
All participating teams must contribute an article describing the machine in terms of mechanics and hard- and software, and their ideas behind their robot. With no restrictions applying to either robot design or construction, the contest is sure to be just as exciting as in previous years.
Source: dlg-feldtage.de
