GrainsWest Summer 2018

The top level is where the vehicle is like a hired man—you just tell it, “Go out there, start at the yard here, go harrow that quarter of land and come home again.” Autonomous doesn’t mean driverless or these space-age things without a cab. It’s all about a) how safe it is and b) when does the autonomy stop making sense. GW: In terms of that assessment, how far do you think farm- ers would be willing to take autonomy? BT: It comes down to how comfortable we are with something going wrong. Like with an air seeder, there’s a lot going on with that. It’s extremely important to make sure it seeds properly, with enough seed in the right spots. With today’s technology, it’s too complicated. We can’t discount how specialized and skilled the farmer sitting in the seat is. It’s like cars. If you’re just going to be driving down a road, that’s one thing. But if you’re going to put a travel trailer behind that car, and then a boat behind that trailer, now with all three items you’re going to back down a boat launch and put the boat in the water, it takes tremendous skill—but you’re still just driving a car. GW: Are there any problems, aside from eliminating man- hours of labour, that automated farm technology can solve? BT: Herbicide resistance is a big one. With the high number of herbicide-resistant weeds, and no new major herbicides coming out lately, we’re going to need a weed solution. Robotic weed- ers, I think, are going to be a major step forward in this type of technology, hands down. It’s going to be a machine that goes out there and picks weeds, burns them, lasers them. It’s not a time-sensitive thing. It can go out there 24 hours a day and weed a crop, it takes no intervention on the human’s part. I think that’s the big tech coming forward—ways of getting around herbicide resistance and tending crops. GW: What do you see as the future of AgOpenGPS? BT: This whole thing really needs a repository, a place for source code and ideas. I’m hoping a university could do this. Students can take it on as a project to build this “home” for all things ag—farmers helping farmers. You can post stuff on forums, but then how do you find it? That’s the big challenge. A way to catalogue these ideas is something that’s really needed for this movement to grow. The Food Issue 2018 grainswest.com 25 Automated farmmachinery controls may include an Arduino Atmel microcontroller (left), which determines the roll and pitch of the vehicle, an automated-steering simulator (top right) for program testing and a linear actuator (bottom right) to operate clutches, levers, throttles and gates.