Last week, SITES Lönnstorp Station began evaluating the field robot, FarmDroid, with help from Nordic Beet Research. FarmDroid is a solar-powered robot capable of both precision seeding and mechanical weed control using Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS technology. Although the robot is primarily designed for commercial farming systems, it is being used to investigate whether it can be adapted for use in a research environment characterized by small experimental plots and a diversity of crops. If the results of the evaluation are promising, the robot will initially be used at Lönnstorp for the management of organic sugar beet within SITES Agroecological Field Experiment (SAFE) infrastructure next year. In the long term, the implementation of this technology could hopefully help reduce the amount of manual labour required for crop establishment and weed management, while improving the efficiency and sustainability of field experiments.
FarmDroid in action (Photo: Johannes Albertsson)