Introduction
Is unmanned driving technology feasible beyond orchards?
While unmanned driving technology has shown promise in orchards, its application in other agricultural scenarios faces significant challenges.
Explore the article to discover the applicability and challenges of implementing autonomous driving technology in other agricultural scenarios.
In China, for crops such as rice, wheat, cotton, corn, and soybeans, most farms operate under a farm machinery cooperative model, except for large farms and state-owned agricultural groups that purchase their own equipment. Farmers engage these cooperatives to provide services such as plowing, tilling, transplanting, and harvesting.
1. Operational Uncertainty
For farm machinery cooperatives, determining when and for whom to provide services is highly unpredictable, often decided on the day itself. Currently, Chinese unmanned agricultural machinery typically relies on Beidou navigation, requiring pre-planned operation paths. The uncertainty of the operation location makes it difficult to plan these paths in advance, significantly reducing the convenience and efficiency of unmanned operations, and failing to meet the time-sensitive demands of agricultural work.
2. Transportation Challenges
Farm machinery cooperatives in China typically serve hundreds to thousands of farmers annually, with farms ranging from a few kilometers to dozens of kilometers apart. Unmanned tractors, which often lack a driver’s cabin, pose significant challenges for equipment transport. Additionally, tractors need to travel on public roads duringthe transportation process, raising safety concerns.
3. Low Electrification Levels
Unmanned operation presupposes a high level of electrification. However, traditional tractors in China are predominantly mechanical with minimal electrification, lacking essential features for unmanned operation such as power shifting, continuously variable transmission, and electro-hydraulic control systems.
4. Inefficiency in Labor Cost Savings
In non-standardized, variable scenarios, even unmanned tractors require one operator per machine, failing to reduce labor costs. Unmanned tractors are often over 50% more expensive than conventional ones, offering low cost-effectiveness for Chinese farm machinery cooperatives and thus lacking feasibility for widespread adoption.
For large international farms, tractor management has reached an optimal scale. For instance, in the United States, there are 3 million professional farmers managing 1.6 billion hectares of farmland, averaging around 53.3 hectares per person.
Tractor usage efficiency and labor reduction are already maximized. Even with unmanned tractors, labor savings are negligible since tasks like refueling and maintenance still require human intervention. Moreover, due to the high cost of unmanned agricultural machinery, despite the advanced state of foreign tractors compared to those in China, there remains limited market demand for unmanned tractors.
Conclusion
In summary, while unmanned driving technology holds promise for revolutionizing agricultural practices, its current implementation faces significant barriers. Operational unpredictability, transportation difficulties, low electrification, and limited labor cost savings all hinder its practicality. Both in China and internationally, the high costs and logistical challenges mean that unmanned tractors have yet to achieve widespread adoption.
In our upcoming edition, we’ll delve into the advantages of orchard robots compared to other agricultural machinery in utilizing autonomous driving technology. Keep an eye out by following our company account at Lanjiang Technology on LinkedIn!
To learn more about Lanjiang Technology, visit our official website or drop us a message in the inbox.
