California agriculture software company FarmX has acquired Amos Power, an Iowa business that builds a twin-track driverless electric tractor for field and orchard work, Farmers Weekly reported. FarmX plans to offer a single system combining artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomy and electric farm equipment.
The Amos Power machine weighs about 3 tonnes, is 3.2m long on two triangular track assemblies and has electric drive equivalent to about 85hp. It is designed for cultivation and planting, weeding and vegetation control, with a claimed run time of four to eight hours depending on the task. Amos has already sold some units and hopes to follow European makers such as AgXeed in selling driverless tracked tractors for field work.
Two years ago FarmX unveiled Perceptive Navigation, a robotics platform that relies on on-board sensors rather than satellite guidance. Its autonomy kits, which can be licensed for tractors, UTVs, ATVs and drones, feed sensor data into an on-board "artificial intelligence compute engine" that recognises trees, poles, boulders and branches. FarmX says it controls implements to within ±2cm, and that mapping a field and planning a task takes minutes, with no pre-mapping or detailed surveys.
Another FarmX product, OrchardPilot, gives autonomous navigation in orchards through a retrofit kit installed in a day, which the company says has been proven on CNH, John Deere and Kubota tractors.
FarmX says it has secured funding to integrate Amos Power's platform, expand customer support and scale up manufacturing. Small electric autonomous machines are aimed at farms where labour is short, and at orchards, where satellite guidance struggles under tree cover.
Photo: an AgXeed driverless tracked tractor, MB-one / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Farmers Weekly
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