6 December/January 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Mission-critical info for uncrewed systems professionals Platform one Three farms in the UK are testing autonomous robot technology for carrying out various tasks (writes Nick Flaherty). Fox Robotics is working with the University of Surrey and the AgriEPI Centre to use the Hugo all-terrain robot system on three farms in Scotland and parts of the east and south-east of England. The FlexBot project aims to add significant robot vision and machine learning (ML) capabilities developed at the university to boost the Hugo’s navigation capabilities. While the Hugo was designed for autonomous navigation around farms, it can also be used for husbandry, harvesting fruit and flowers, and other agricultural applications. It can be adapted to other tasks as well, from mowing grass, transporting soil and handling delicate seedlings, to transporting harvested produce. The core objective of the project is to enhance the robustness of the Hugo’s navigation system, ensuring that it can operate autonomously in complex farm environments. This will make it suitable for autonomous operations beyond traditional farm settings. The project will use the image data from the three farms to train the ML system to cope with more complex situations. The initial focus is on scalability, productivity and profitability of English fruit farms, which are struggling to find seasonal workers. The navigation system is based on Bird’s Eye View maps and enables the Hugo to autonomously navigate outdoor environments, including fruit farms. The project will also see the development of add-on units such as robotic arms that can be used as a collaborative robot, or cobot, with workers. Picking robots are still some way from being commercially ready, but robotic platforms that can move fruit and crates around a site will allow pickers to keep picking rather than spending time taking the fruit to a central weighing location. Ground vehicles Autonomous farm hand The Hugo farm robot is being used in the FlexBot project
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