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Robotics
200 Kilometres From the Farmhouse: How SwarmFarm Keeps Its Robots Connected
SwarmFarm Robotics builds autonomous AgRobots that operate in the paddock, where connectivity has traditionally been unreliable - a problem for any robot that needs to report status, receive updates, or support remote monitoring in the field.
▶ Watch Will's story (3:05)
Connected Farms provides the connectivity layer that keeps SwarmFarm's robots and their operators connected while working, including on sprayer units operating autonomously in the field.
"Having good quality connectivity is a key part of decision-making in farming now," says Will McCarthy, Chief Product Officer at SwarmFarm Robotics.
With reliable connectivity in place, SwarmFarm's robots can stream data on weed hits, chemical use per hectare, and machine status straight to the operator's iPad in real time, and flag faults, stoppages, or empty tanks the moment they happen - rather than an operator finding out hours later, or not at all. For machines that can be working 200 kilometres from the farmhouse, that visibility is the difference between autonomy and guesswork.
Connected Farms and SwarmFarm are now trialling Low Earth Orbit (LEO) technology on board the robots, delivering up to 150 Mbps while machines operate in the field at their usual working speed - a level of connectivity farmers haven't had access to before.
Transcript
aving good-quality connectivity is a key part of decision-making in farming now.
Good day, I’m Will McCarthy, Chief Product Officer at SwarmFarm Robotics. Here at SwarmFarm, we build robotics for agriculture. The machine behind me is a 12-metre spraying robot, but our robots can interface with a range of different attachments. They are not just sprayers. We call the autonomous platform SwarmBot, and we have an API called SwarmConnect that allows us to interface and communicate with other attachments on board, whether that’s a sprayer, mower, slasher or spreader.
When we built SwarmBot, we designed it to work 100% offline. In saying that, for a better user experience, high-quality connectivity to the machine is key. A machine might be operating at the back of a farm, and in some cases it could be 200 kilometres away from where the farmer is. You want to know what it’s doing, whether it’s operating, whether it’s still moving and spraying, and whether it’s doing what you expected it to do.
If there is a fault, if the machine stops, runs out of chemical or runs out of fuel, the operator will not get a notification unless there is connectivity. A big part of autonomy is the farmer being able to see what is going on in the field.
Swarm streams a lot of data back to an iOS app that we have developed. Every time we fire and hit a weed, that data is captured and sent through to the iPad in real time, so the farmer can see the weed load in their paddock, what the machine is doing, and how much chemical is being used per hectare. All of that information is available, and good-quality connectivity is a key part of decision-making in farming now.
Most of our machines currently operate in areas with 3G or 4G coverage, but some machines are already working commercially on farms with very poor connectivity. It might be one or two bars of 3G across the whole farm, and even then, coverage might only reach 50% of the property.
We are working with Connected Farms to trial satellite technology on board the machine, giving our machines better access to connectivity. What we have found is that Satellite-on-the-Move technology has really revolutionised the way we are getting data and connectivity in the field.
Our machines operate at relatively low speeds, around 10 to 15 kilometres an hour, and they can have around 100 to 150 megabits per second of connectivity while operating and moving around the field. From an operational perspective for a farmer, that is phenomenal. Farmers have not seen connectivity like that before in the agriculture industry.
For us as a SwarmFarm business, it is also really exciting because if there is an issue with a robot in a field, we can see everything remotely. Even with poor connectivity, we can still see data and get information off the machine, but being able to access high-bandwidth information in real time is really valuable.
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