hello welcome to Kate's Ag today I'm here in Audsin, Denmark with Hans Christian an
organic farmer and Product Director for Agro Intelli which is very interesting
could you tell me a little bit about what you do yeah we are producing uh
autonomous Implement carrier called Robotti so it's taking out the tractor drive from
the tractors and supporting the farmers and doing a different tasks in the in the field
thank you
our concept is having like a standard Implement carrier you can put on standard implements you
have from your from your farm so you don't have to buy a new implements you can use what
you ever used before so it's a versatile Implement carrier yeah that's really neat
so you can attach your implement and it will pull it through the field
yes exactly and you don't have to be in the ends to turn it around it will turn around itself so we
we try to make it very intuitive and very simple to use because we know our customers is is Farmers
and yeah some of them are getting a little bit old so some of them might have been able to to
use the outer steering but some might not so we try to make a very very simple system but I
can show you later also yes I I would love to and so you really don't even need to be in the field
when the robot's operating no that's uh you don't have to actually you can monitor it remotely so
you can sit in your home office and maybe have 10 robots running out in the field and then just log
on to your screens and and see what it's doing and then you can drive around and control the
job it's doing and make sure everything is in in order instead of sitting in a tractor cabin you
have the big seeders behind it's very hard to see you might have some sensors but still it can be
very hard to control the job you're doing in this situation you can walk behind while it's driving
you don't have to to worry about sitting in the cabin wow I can't believe that this is really
the latest technology in agriculture exactly so how long has this robot been developed for yeah
it's actually have a long history back it comes out of Kongskilde a Danish Implement manufacturer
but this company Agra Intelli was founded in 2015 by our founder CEO former CEO so it's it's been a
project working in the background and then in 2018 2019 it was decided to go commercial with the with
the product and today we have 35 out running commercial activities around the world actually
and of course we are hoping to expand a lot in the next couple of years because we can see there's a
high demand for this technology because shortage of Labor is just a general uh problem all over the
world wherever we travel it's it's a problem to get Farm Workers because the Farm Workers that are
left they should probably do a more uh observing job than than sitting in a in a cabin it might be
better they go around and control the seeds are placed in the right depth and stuff like that
but that's up to the farmers but we can just see there is a high demand for for these Technologies
yes and then when you're not spending as much time in the field you can spend more time optimizing
your crop and your soil yeah exactly and we also see Farms are also getting bigger here
in Denmark but we can see a few a few uh Manpower for managing more hectares and that means in the
end you're only yourself left and if you have to sit in a tractor cabin all the time you won't have
time to do all the management part of it so so I think we are moving towards this uh wherever we go
that's uh I think it's one of the most highly labor intensive crops so we have rented the
robot for this field and we actually just leave it running all the time almost 24/7.
really yeah because continuously picking yeah yeah and when it's
done we just started over again and just keep this all moving
so this robot is able to both seed the plants and weed the crops. yes
it's a mess you can share some videos but we planted it with the robotic we put on
a planting planter machine and then after planting we we just started the weeding so
we just continuously keep weeding it to keep weeds away normally this is a crop that takes
many many many many hours of many more labor that are going around with a hack or something
but we can minimize this to a minimum because we can't find any manual labor to to do this so
either I have to do it or mess has to do it and we don't really have the time for it yes we are
problems on our farm as well and it really makes it difficult to be a farmer in these times exactly
exactly the robot uses a Precision that a human yeah exactly when we started this self-picking
business we used a tractor by the end of the season I almost taken out all of the strawberry
plants because I couldn't drive precise enough I was driving without outstanding and then every
time I had to look back then I was out of line when I turned around so then this row yeah so
the strawberry was plant was gone so we we can do this with very high Precision over and over again
this is just a program that's in Robotti when it's done we just do the same again and it will
do exactly the same operation so it's rtk GPS like you have on a tractor it's the same yeah and what
robot able to seed and weed actually no limitation everything we go from strawberries we can go to
corn a Maize yeah fava beans. salads yeah no limitation this is just a matter of the
Implement you put on so that's that's the focus yeah how many employees implement the
RN use in Denmark right now I would say 25 - 30 different implements I used here in Denmark how
How long has this robot been available for purchase by farmers
yeah since uh 2019 the early model was was introduced and then of course we Advanced a
lot two years the the sales have increased a lot with this new model we call 150d the 150d has two
engines in it so we have one inch and with the 75 horsepowers for propulsion and also using the
hitch and then they have another 75 horsepower engine for for a PTO implements if you need a
power take off so in this situation I only use one engine because there's no power takeoff on
this implement but if I was going to run with a with a mower flaler or something then I'll turn
into and then 75 horsepower is dedicated to the to the mower yes that makes a lot of sense and
how much weight is the robot able to pull for an Implement yeah the pulling force is a little
bit different difficult because because it's a low weight so one of the key targets over here
is to minimize the soil compaction yeah we don't want to destroy the soil and that's why we want
to go for for smaller Implement carriers that are not weighing that much so it has a it has
a way of a weight of three tons robotic 3000 kilograms so the pulling force is minimized
by the weight because it's a matter of how much traction you can you can move to the soil because
you're not weighing that much but it can lift an Implement of 1250 kilograms in the hitch oh wow
that's quite a bit yeah it's okay it takes most implements I would say standard implements that
fits in the in Robotti like that for three meter implements and are there updates for the software
that farmers will do yeah as they use their robot throughout the years you will not you'll not see
any difference from having a robot and having an iPhone or something sometimes you get a message
that you need an update the same Robotti gets and then you can accept it or you can
wait a few weeks because you want to make sure there's no bugs in it so you know that
but that's that's how it's working so when the farmer turns on it might say okay you
need an update now and then you just wait for a few minutes and then the robot is
updated and that's lifetime updating of software that's included when you when you buy a Robotti
yeah yeah that you need to have that confidence because this is a completely new technology
there's only a few on the market actually there's two very big Danish robot manufacturers but also
in US you have one called Goss sprayer they're spraying they have a very good success so so it is
it's still an early adaptation Market here and for me it's also a matter of the farmer's perception
of this because it's it's a whole new way to think of his farm how to do it it's not just to buy a
new tractor this is different because now you're leaving it up to technology and software to run in
the field but you you also a farmer yourself and and sometimes you sit in the cabin and you press
a button in the end then you can actually relax for maybe half an hour and until you're in the
other end this is very close to being autonomous you're just taking the steering wheel in in the
end and then turning around that's what Robotti is doing for you here yes so that is just amazing
this is the first time I've ever seen a robot in action I can't believe it it feels like something
that would be so many years down the road and and you have actually put it into action yeah you can
see it it's running and I'm not I'm not doing anything it's running by itself and and stable
um because that's that's another you can easily make a robot but it needs to be very robust and
it needs to be far more like they need to know that it's working all the time and no software
problems or anything and have good trust yeah good trust yeah and that's that's what we really
improved the last couple of years because we were we were earlier on the market and that's of course
giving some some bruises for the what we learned a lot and that's why I can with confident can say we
have a very robust product today that we can sell to any farmer and they can drive with it that's
great yeah and how many models or trials and errors did you go through or years of trying new
technology to come up with this model you have now if you take the newer time the basic construction
has been the same for for the live last five six years but it it grew bigger because we also
noticed that the farm they want some horsepowers for for pulling the Implement and then in 2019
this 150d came and just in the spring we launched a new one same construction but it's called the
LR for long range and so this it has only have one engine but you still have possibilities to
get out hydraulic and then we put in 300 liters of diesel tank in it because for example at vegetable
Growers we experienced they put the robot out in one corner of a very big field and then just
let it run for days to them it's very important that they can just fill it up from home and then
let it run so that's why some of the reasons why we made a new model this one just have a smaller
fuel tank because there's two engines that are dragging out diesel so it can't run for that
long it can run for 18 hours or so oh wow that's a very long time yeah yeah but the other one can
go for 60. Oh my goodness yeah yeah it's not very high consumption of fuel it is it's a very good
engine this Kubota Engine 75 horsepower so um so this is a Robotti interface you have on your your
phone or your tablet or computer so when you're a farmer and you buy a robot you get a login to to a
home page and there you can go in and then you can click on the robot this is one is called demopr19
that's that's how it is and then you can see in here you can actually see what plan is running
how many how long it's been running remaining time for operation how much it's covered and then you
can see here there's a map here where you can see it running in the field Live you can click
on what plan is running you can see that's what it needs to do still of the plan I believe you
can also press on on coverage and then in here you can actually also access there's a front and rear
camera so you can monitoring what what the work is doing in the field if if for some reason sit
at the office or sit at home then you can log in and see if if it's okay that's really great that
great so you can find out everything about your robot or tractor basically from your
iPhone exactly exactly and you can go in and get some basic details everything is okay oil
temperature water temperature and and stuff like that just to make sure everything is okay you have
a logbook in here you can see what it's been doing for the last couple of days you can actually you
can log in directly into the robot here then you there's a terminal on the back of the robot that's
what you see here as well so you can go in and see all the telemetrics and on that part and you
can actually also stop everybody here from from this phone this is amazing and so you also have a
Implement that will lead between the strawberry plants and detect the strawberry yeah that's
um that's the good thing about the Robotti that we're not really locked to any specific
implement or in this specific operation we can actually attach pretty much all implements so
the latest the work we've done we together with a German Implement manufacturer cult here they
called so they they made an inter-row weeder and that means there's some camera guidance
on it and then it's detecting the plant and then it can actually weed in between the in
the in between the plants in the in the rows that's just awesome that's it that that will
take the all the manual labor out of these strawberries that's the last thing we need
here if we had an into row weeder then we will not have to do any manual labor here
and strawberries are a very labor intensive crop to grow exactly it takes a lot of manual labor I
think it's estimated for 800 hours per hectare to grow strawberries at least here in Denmark
and when will these strawberries be ready to harvest?
these are actually for next year but it's it's the first year crop and that's we don't we don't
sell it these are planted two months ago and then next year in June they will be ready to
to harvest so it's just the plant is growing and it's a making the root and everything so
getting ready for for next year so yeah it takes it takes a year because we're planting
bare root plants they're called so they take some time to to develop the root system and
everything thank you so much for watching make sure to like And subscribe okay bye