Agri-Rover Pastoral Robot

A multi-disciplinary AgResearch team has designed and built a paddock robot called Agri-Rover.  It is a small, fully-autonomous rover that will automatically undertake multiple tasks around farms day and night.  The concept is for an all-weather rover that deploys from a central base station, independently navigates to a paddock, goes under two-wire fences and gates, slowly but progressively traverses the paddock while taking measurements and doing tasks, then automatically returns to the base station for recharging and further deployment.

Andrew Manderson is a soil scientist who has an ambition to tackle pasture and soil sampling, which are routine and time-consuming tasks, with an automated aid like a paddock robot or “Agri-Rover”.  There is a world-wide trend in arable farming to automate major aspects of tillage, seed sowing and spraying.  When surveyed, many farmers say they would like tools to take on repetitious tasks, such as herding livestock.  An Australian team has a $1m project developing a robot to herd cows and New Zealand farmers have the idea that a robot with a camera could be sent out to bring in the cows, with a horn or barking noise on board.

Andrew was a farm hand for several years before studying agriculture and becoming a soil scientist and is very keen on associated practical tasks.  He has had the concept of a paddock robot since 2009.  He applied for a grant from the AgResearch Curiosity Fund in 2012 and after peer review and support. was funded to develop prototypes of the Agri-Rover.  The challenge has been to keep the cost down by using off-the-shelf components and include the capabilities to make the project truly worthwhile.  “Always in the back of our mind was keeping it affordable, which is often a sticking point with new farm technologies,”  he says.  Assistance was received from Paul Lovejoy, John West, and Chris Hunt at Grasslands, and Steve Gebbie and Scott Sevier from Lincoln.  Most of the fabrication work was undertaken by Warwick McKenzie at Advanced Sheetmetals in Palmerston North.

The Agri-Rover currently weighs 155kg and runs on four 240v gear motors.  It travels at about 5km/h, goes up and down 15-20 degree slopes, is very robust and spins on a penny.  It has a rechargeable battery and is also solar powered.  It can be programmed to follow a pre-defined track between way points using GPS or while under development, it can be remotely operated by hand-controls.

The first task is to equip the rover for pasture measurement, to provide real-time feedback on paddock covers, feed wedges, and possibly even pasture quality.  This is all about gathering quick, accurate information for real-time decision making, without having to spend any human-hours collecting it.  “At the same time we’re looking to measure soil properties for precision fertiliser application, mapping compaction zones, and creating soils maps for variable-rate irrigation.  We are developing the rover to do as many tasks as possible to make it as useful as possible”  Andrew says.  The team is also testing systems to automatically treat pasture and fresh cow urine at the patch scale.  By programming the rover to drive over every square foot of a paddock, it could be useful for the selective identification and treatment of individual urine patches, and selective identification and treatment of individual weeds.  “Locating and treating urine patches is the single biggest challenge we have set ourselves,” said Dr Manderson.  “The level of required GPS technology is currently very expensive, and while we can tow a sizeable spray unit, it is too big a drain on current battery life.  Targeting individual weeds is even more of a challenge.  But we’re now starting to work with the University of Auckland, Callaghan Innovation, and Victoria University to help solve these challenges.”