Four driverless tractors are concurrently running on the farm in an orderly manner. They are remotely controlled by an operator with the monitoring system. (Sapporo-shi, Hokkaido)
A group of researchers of the Research Faculty of Agriculture of Hokkaido University, headed by Professor Noboru Noguchi, demonstrated an orderly running of four driverless tractors at the University’s campus in Sapporo city on August 18.
The four robot tractors were remotely controlled by an operator through a monitoring system.
These tractors were automatically driven with the global positioning system (GPS). Before the driverless tractors begin to work, information on running courses on a farm has been put into their respective programming.
Receiving GPS’s signals as well as those sent from the terrestrial station for correcting position errors, the four tractors could run almost exactly on the course remotely controlled by the operator. They ran off the course only within a five cent meters.
The four tractors divided into two groups. And the operator remotely controlled these groups of unmanned tractors through the monitoring system so that they could make two lines to run in an orderly manner.
Remotely controlled running of multiple driverless tractors will require further improvements particularly of efficiency of tractor’s turnings and stability of signal’s transmission. It is expected that the robot tractors will be practically used by Japanese farmers within one or two years.