FARM ROBOTS OFFER LONG WANTED SOLUTIONS TO THE FARMER:
UV-light to fight mildew
For long is has been known to science that UV-light kills mildew. Until now there has been no practical and cost efficient way to apply light to plants. This is a perfect job for a robot. It can work night hours. It takes no harm from long time exposure to UV-light. It can cover a large area with one lamp only in a cost efficient way.
No soil compression
The larger a tractor is the larger land area it can cover in a given amount of time, saving labour cost. The flip side of this is that the tractor compresses the soil and reduces the productive land in a significant way. The Thorvald farm robot is lightweight and does not compress the soil.
Affordable weeding
Weeding is better than spraying pesticides both for the environment and for plant growth. But manual weeding is too expensive for most crops. Weed is becoming increasingly resistant to pesticides and new pesticides are becoming more expensive to develop and few new types are available in the market. Robots can be used to weed mechanically using camera vision and machine learning to distinguish between crop and weed.
Surveillance of plant stress
Multispectral cameras and other sensors used close to the plant give good data to identify early signs of plant stress. The earlier the farmer knows that the plant is in distress, either from nutritional deficiencies or from disease outbreaks, the earlier the problem can be handled.
OUR SERVICES:
Saga Robotics will offer the services of the robot Thorvald. We are soon to start delivering services to farmers and are planning for a multitude of services like UV-treatment to fight mildew, crop surveillance, in-field transportation of cases with the robot working alongside pickers, weeding, and more.
The first service we will be offering is UV-treatment to fight mildew in strawberries, raspberries, and cucumbers and other crops.
Scientists at NMBU has studied which parts of UV-light that is efficient against the different types of mildew and on different types of plants, and Thorvald is adjusted to apply the light in the optimal manner to each crop. UV-treatment will be done at night, as the treatment is the most efficient when applied in darkness, as it prevents potential damage to bees which sleep at night.
The Thorvald series
