Agricultural machinery enters a new era of unmanned operation
Unmanned tractors enter the fields
On April 24, on the land west of Chengezhuang Village, Henanzhai Town, Miyun County on the outskirts of Beijing, a large tractor was at work. Unlike an ordinary tractor, the operator in the cab sat in the seat without needing to operate it by hand, and the tractor plowed automatically in the field, drawing exclamations from farmers standing at the edge of the field watching: “I have lived most of my life, and this is the first time I have seen a tractor that does not need a person to drive it. It is truly amazing!”
In appearance, this tractor equipped with the Beidou agricultural machinery automatic navigation driving system is no different from an ordinary tractor except for the white GNSS antenna on top of the cab, but inside the tractor cab there is a touch-sensitive LCD screen, and on the screen the tractor's working conditions and the field plot's environment and so on are fully visible. After setting the parameters before operation, the navigation system guides the agricultural machinery into automatic operation mode and begins straight-line plowing. “After positioning is done, when driving in a straight line you basically do not need to hold the steering wheel; you only need to adjust the tractor's working direction when turning at the headland, making operation very convenient and easy. It also drives especially straight, much more precisely than manual operation, and it can still work at night.” the operator said.
During this year's spring plowing, unmanned tractors and seeders navigated by the global satellite positioning system have already entered field operations on some large farms in Xinjiang and Northeast China and other places, greatly improving the quality of cultivation operations and work efficiency, and effectively reducing the input of agricultural production costs. Unmanned agricultural machinery is becoming another new highlight after drones, and agricultural machinery is ushering in an “unmanned” era.
Unmanned agricultural machinery has many advantages
Unmanned agricultural machinery uses a satellite positioning and navigation system to remotely command agricultural machinery to drive automatically for precision cultivation. This system perfectly combines satellite navigation and automatic control technology with agricultural machinery. Its working principle is to use a built-in base station to transmit the satellite positioning signal to the tractor after secondary precise positioning. Before cultivation, technicians input parameters such as cultivation area and soil thickness into the navigation system. After the antenna receives the signal, automatic straight-line driving can be achieved through the navigation system. In addition to tractors, large agricultural machinery such as seeders, harvesters and plant protection machines can all apply satellite navigation automatic driving systems.
According to reports, the main advantage of unmanned agricultural machinery is that it can achieve 24-hour uninterrupted operation, with labor efficiency 2 to 3 times higher than manual driving. Traditional agricultural machinery operations can only work 80 mu per day, while with unmanned driving it can work 160 mu day and night, improving the use efficiency of agricultural machinery. Unmanned driving not only greatly reduces the driver's labor intensity, but also achieves higher operation quality than manual driving, with a deviation of no more than 2 cm per kilometer, significantly improving operation precision, reducing land waste caused by improper driver operation, avoiding repeated operations, maximizing the utilization rate of land, seeds and fertilizer, reducing production costs, and improving the input-output ratio. At the same time, using an automatic driving system for ridging or sowing operations in farmland results in uniform crop spacing, which is beneficial to crop growth, ventilation and the absorption of water and nutrients, can provide the best growth space for crops, helps increase crop yields, and is also beneficial to mechanical harvesting operations in autumn. In today's era of a shortage of agricultural labor and increasingly high requirements for agricultural machinery operation efficiency, unmanned agricultural machinery undoubtedly has many advantages and good market potential.
Domestically produced unmanned tractors are already on the market
At present, some large domestic agricultural machinery enterprises have already launched tractors equipped with automatic navigation driving systems, and they have already been marketed in batches.
The automated tractor independently developed by Foton Lovol Heavy Industry with an agricultural machinery navigation and automatic operation system was used for spring plowing operations in the Xinjiang region for the first time this year. This automated tractor integrates multiple automated functions such as global satellite positioning and GPS automatic navigation. Its straight-line navigation tracking accuracy is less than 5 cm, and its automatic row-following accuracy is less than 10 cm. It realizes automatic tractor-controlled operations such as plowing, precision sowing and fertilizing, and solves the bottleneck restriction of “rows not straight when sowing and inaccurate row joining.” At the same time, tractors with automatic navigation systems are not limited by light and can achieve continuous operation at night, especially with obvious effects on large plots. Not only is land utilization improved, but the machine owner's income can also increase by 20%. This product has already been marketed in batches and is deeply welcomed by the market.
John Deere's ATU automatic navigation system has received widespread attention from users across the country since it was introduced to the Chinese market. Following the delivery of the first batch of ATU automatic navigation devices in Guangxi in March, in April John Deere held ATU automatic navigation demonstration meetings in many places across the country, and John Deere tractors equipped with the ATU automatic navigation system carried out demonstrations of operations such as subsoiling and sowing. It is understood that the RTK signal accuracy of John Deere's ATU automatic navigation system can reach 2.5 cm, and the SF2 signal accuracy can reach 5 cm, making it capable of precise sowing, ridging, spraying and harvesting operations.
As a leading product of Zoomlion's “smart agricultural machinery,” the “Gengwang” RV1254 tractor, equipped with terminal information control systems such as automatic driving and three-dimensional touch navigation, carries the domestically produced Beidou satellite navigation automatic driving system. It can achieve straight rows and accurate row joining in tractor operations, with a deviation of no more than 2 cm over a 1000 m sowing row, and 24-hour all-weather operation, effectively improving operation quality and shortening the operation cycle. It can also avoid repeated and missed operations by setting farmland boundaries and driving paths, and at the same time can record driving paths and measure farmland area, greatly improving operation accuracy. It has obvious advantages in agricultural machinery operation links such as fine land preparation, precision sowing, precision plant protection and mechanized harvesting of crops such as sugarcane, cotton, tomato, sugar beet and peanut.
It is also understood that tractors currently in use can also achieve unmanned driving by installing a satellite navigation automatic driving system. Because this system is relatively expensive, farmers in some areas of Xinjiang who install satellite navigation automatic driving systems can receive subsidy funds. If it can enter the national subsidy catalogue, unmanned agricultural machinery will be rapidly applied to field operations just like drones.