Grainswest Tech 2021

Tech 2021 Grains West 20 FEATURE Produced by Sunnyvale, California’s Trimble, the GreenSeeker Handheld Crop Sensor is a simplified version of the company’s variable rate application and mapping system. Built to aid farmers in crop-related decision- making, this lightweight, mobile, easy to use crop sensing tool measures plant health, or vigour, often difficult to assess with the naked eye. First released in 2013, it was initially used by agronomists and soil scientists, but has increasingly been used by farmers in recent years. The device weighs about 300 grams, including battery. Its trigger- activated sensor emits brief bursts of red and infrared lights, sensing the intensity of each as it is reflected back. This generates a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) value, which is used to assess the condition of plants. On a scale of .00 to .99, the higher the number, the healthier the plant. The device can be used on individual plants or a farmer can walk an area of the field to generate an average reading. This can then be checked against a supplied chart to determine a crop’s nitrogen needs. The sensor can also be used with the Trimble Connected Farm scout app and is Bluetooth enabled. “The user simply holds the device over its target, squeezes the trigger and receives the NDVI value on a readable LCD screen,” said Justin Prickel, Trimble product team manager, application controls. “It really provides you a snapshot in the lifecycle of a plant. You can then take that overall value back to the office and use it to make informed decisions.” Portable plant sensor continued DRONE ON WHEELS Agricultural robots have gone from fantasy to fruition in the blink of an eye. Distributed Autonomous Systems Laboratory (Daslab) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been a leader in robotic farm equipment development. Daslab designers have created a number of small robot vehicles that prowl fields to monitor crop health. Their latest innovation is the TerraSentia robot farm vehicle developed by Girish Chowdhary, associate professor, agricultural and biological engineering, computer science, and his colleagues. The robot is designed to examine crops and research plots from ground level to record information about plants that is not visible to overhead drones and airplanes. The robot’s camera sensors located on its front, top and side capture a 360-degree view of the greenery. This “drone on the ground” enables farmers and breeders to determine plant traits such as stem width and leaf area and assesses the presence and extent of leaf and stem diseases with ease and accuracy. “The companies who are breeding these seeds need data on the physiology of the plant,” said Chowdhary. Scientists must typically make these measurements by hand, which does not work at field scale and is subject to human error. “The robot is the system’s front-end, while the back- end is a cloud infrastructure where data is analyzed,” said Chowdhary. “It provides breeders with accurate, consistent, high-quality data regarding what they are trying to measure, and does it on a large scale.” An additional aspect of the robot’s appeal is its size and portability. It is just 33 cm wide and 36 cm long and weighs less than 14 kg. “You can easily pick it up, and it fits well between rows of plants to collect data,” said Chowdhary. “There is a lot of interest in agricultural robotics today. We have created a robust and reliable technology, allowing our robots to navigate at length in an under-canopy environment, and their compact size contributes to this ability.” The robot is publicly available for purchase, and though it may appeal to agricultural researchers and farmers, it is primarily geared to plant breeders. Photo:L.BrianStauffer,courtesyof theUniversityof Illinois