In the pursuit of sustainable agriculture, farmers and policy makers are increasingly looking for innovative solutions to monitor and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions operations. With unprecedented geospatial density and low sampling costs, HiRes-Soils develops a robotic sensor platform to directly measure and sample soil carbon as well as CO2 and N2O flux. This will drive sustainability in agriculture and create novel ecosystem service markets (e.g. carbon) with robust monitoring, reporting and verification systems. Current methods to measure soil CO2 and N2O efflux (key soil health and GHG indicators) rely on either expensive flux towers (@£200K) that measure whole fields or spot samplers (ADC\_BioScientific ACE).
Proposed in this application, novel robotic systems will dramatically reduce the cost of soil sampling, offering autonomous navigation to increase sampling density as well as tool bars to carry next generation sensing equipment (soil core retrieval, penetrometers and gas exchange systems).
This project is led by agri-robotic specialist ARWAC Ltd in collaboration with digital platform company, FARM-B and the robotics team at the University of Lincoln (UoL, sensor intergartion and testing). In **HiRes-Soils** innovative sensing equipment will be built upon a proven agri-robotic platform (ARWACv4) developed in prior IUK projects. The platform is agriculturally robust and low cost. Here we will also integrate the data acquired to Farm-B's route planning and data analytics software suite. Farm-B's platform is proven, can integrate data to wider farm management systems (YARA-X and John Deere Operations) and is GHGProtocol compliant to enable marketing of carbon credits in ecosystem service markets.
The **HiRes-Soils** autonomous sampling system will produce high resolution heat maps of soil properties, carbon, and GHG efflux, visualised for end-users through the Farm-B digital platform. Providing soil baseline data, we will test the **HiRes-Soils** platform across 30 arable farms in Defra's high profile LNFWV Biodiversity Recovery demonstration project (30 large farms across Lincolnshire). Demonstrating the platform's utility to map and track GHG fluxes through scaled regenerative agriculture and nature recovery sites (primary market).
With proof of concept demonstrated in this project (TRL7), ARWAC and FARM-B will market robotic soil sampling across the UK and beyond. The addressable market is significant, N.Ireland alone have dedicated £45M to sample all the provinces' fields (6% UK land mass) and Defra (SFI) is funding soil nutrition management for English farmers @£6/ha.
Blackgrass is one of the most economically disastrous weeds in western Europe. Control of blackgrass has relied on the intensive use of herbicides. However, 80% of blackgrass-infested fields surveyed across England were resistant to all three major herbicide groups. Severe blackgrass infestations reduce yields by up to 12% (c. £300 per/ha) costing UK farmers £300M-£500M and lost yield of c. 860,000T. Blackgrass is creating significant jeopardy for wheat farmers, with serious negative environmental impacts.
This project lays the foundation for next-generation robotic vehicles powered by renewable energy and tooled to control blackgrass. It drives productivity by increasing yield through weed eradication. It contributes to Net Zero Agriculture by reducing input waste (N/pesticides) and removing fossil fuels from key farming operations.
In 2 previous IUK feasibility studies (IUK\_105137; IUK\_78600), ARWAC and University of Lincoln (UoL) developed and patented 2 new robotic weeding vehicles; a small 3KW platform (V4) and a larger 32KW vehicle (V5). Both vehicles are autonomous steerage hoes powered by novel machine learning technology for weed recognition, row finding and vehicle path planning. Drones are used to develop weed maps of crops; this mapping data optimises autonomous route planning, whilst cameras on the robots facilitate high-precision hoeing between rows.
The objectives of this project are to push the technology from laboratory stage to full testing in multiple farm environments, supported by our network of c20 arable farms, where farmer input that has been secured to support the development and user design input required to demonstration in an operational environments. On-farm demonstration and co-creation with the our network of involved farmers (20 farms; 40,000 acres of cereals) across multiple fields provides compelling proof-of-concept, value-chain analysis and forward-looking design improvements. This enables ARWAC to build trust to secure necessary onward investment that scales the technology and generates revenue. Subject to farm trial data, our plan is a hoeing-as-a-service model, where ARWAC provide "hives" of robots to farmer groups. The initial use case is blackgrass hoeing, but the platforms and autonomy software can be adapted for multiple secondary markets.
Rapid advances are being made in the world of agritech, which is itself driving demand for integrated electric hubs (e-hubs) to provide the speed, torque, efficiency and durability required.
The project aims to drive the electric revolution by undertaking design for manufacture, integrating the motor, gearbox, brake and controller modules into a single unit designed specifically for agritech requirements. The product design will be available in a range of power outputs, and thus will facilitate scaling up and easy adoption by a multitude of vehicle and robot manufacturers.
Key to the project will be a close working relationship with two original equipment manufacturers with different agritech applications. These relationships will confirm duty cycles and running requirements, optimise the relationship between the gearbox/hub design and motor design, and focus the design for manufacture/scaleup.
As part of the design for manufacture, an assessment for automation will also be performed.
The project will result in two power variants (at opposite ends of the power range) of the e-hub being manufactured. They will be dyno tested for efficiency and durability, then fitted to appropriate vehicles for preliminary confirmation of dyno results by means of agricultural field trials.
"The project focuses on the development of an environmentally sensitive mechanical weed control system for use across arable farms in the UK. This is to address the widespread issue of the Blackgrass weed within arable cropping land with a view to providing an alternative method of husbandry to spraying with herbicides. The objectives are to optimise crop production and longer term soil quality through the reduced use of herbicides across arable farm enterprises.
Field trials will be employed to test the most effective methods of weed destruction and precision digital mapping of fields will be combined with engineered vehicles to provide a sustainable alternative to herbicidal use bringing financial and environmental improvements to the farming economy in the UK.
The project is of significant interest due to national scale of the issue in cultivated land. Some 80% of fields surveyed in England show resistance to the predominant selectively targeted treatments commonly employed by farmers to control the Blackgrass weed. This results in yield impact of up to 12% and costs of circa. £300 per hectare in lost yields and additional spraying control costs. (Source: Hicks, H.L et al.)
It is for these reasons that it is considered vital that an alternative to the current range of herbicides be developed for widespread use in the UK arable market.
The project is a collaboration between industry specialists and the University of Lincoln with a view to deliver a highly researched and technical machine capable of replacing the existing control treatments through the innovation of market leading technologies."