Unmanned “Unmanned Farm” Performs Summer Harvest Celebration

A vast expanse of fertile land rolls with the waves of wheat. In the golden wheat field, an intelligent combine harvester’s motor roars. With just a finger movement, the unmanned harvester begins to operate automatically, harvesting mature wheat in an orderly manner. This is a scene of the “unmanned” new cooperative farm in Shilidon Village, Juegang Street, Rudong County, Jiangsu Province.

Import high-precision digital maps of the farm in advance, and locate them around the farmland. The machine will automatically plan the complete path, and the unmanned agricultural machine will automatically harvest along the path. We have installed a set of BeiDou navigation autonomous driving equipment on the harvester, which can achieve a positioning accuracy of ± 2.5 centimeters through BeiDou satellite positioning. The remote control device in our hand constantly refreshes the real-time data transmitted by the intelligent combine harvester. Lu Haitao, the technical director of the “unmanned” new cooperative farm, introduced that during the autonomous driving process, the agricultural machinery moves, turns, turns, and lifts agricultural tools The start and stop of the header can be accurately achieved. With such equipment, standing by the ridge of a field or even remotely controlling in a control room, one can easily complete the wheat summer harvest task.

The “Unmanned” New Cooperative Farm Project is the first rural reform pilot project undertaken by Rudong County in Jiangsu Province. Last year, it settled in the core area of the National Rural Industry Integration Development Demonstration Park “Grain Integration Demonstration Park”. The project integrates and applies modern agricultural information technologies such as the new generation Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence, and unmanned driving to build an unmanned farm with intelligent agricultural machinery as the core and farm comprehensive management big data platform as the support, with reliable perception, comprehensive interconnection, and digital intelligent regulation.

Unmanned harvesting is just one part of the farm’s implementation of “unmanned” agricultural machinery. During the spring and summer harvest periods this year, the 200 acre core area of the farm achieved the full process of “cultivation, management, and harvesting” unmanned for the first time. Behind the new model, it relies on a “smart brain”. In the control center not far from the fields, technicians can accurately grasp various information through the control platform. In addition to the basic parameters and operation parameters of each agricultural machine, as well as the historical operation trajectory and area of each field, the situation of each field on the farm is also clear at a glance. Lu Haitao introduced, “The visualization interface can open the monitoring of various areas of the farm, see the current crop growth situation, view and analyze the meteorological, vegetation, soil, plant growth and other data information of the 12 experimental fields in the core area, and provide precise guidance for irrigation, fertilizer application, pesticide application and other links during crop growth.

According to on-site calculations, the wheat production of the “unmanned” new cooperative farm is expected to reach 600 kilograms per acre this year. The production brought about by the entire process of “unmanned” is not inferior to that of “manned”, but the advantages are very obvious. As long as the path is well planned, agricultural machinery can operate 24 hours a day. Through unmanned operation, we can save 20% to 25% of labor. Taking summer harvest as an example, for 200 acres of wheat harvesting, one person can complete it. “Liu Zongchen, the owner of Rudong Shilidon Family Farm and the head of the” unmanned “new cooperative farm, lamented that the improvement in intelligence not only solves the problem of rural labor shortage, It can also make the operation of grain planting more convenient, precise, efficient, and faster, which represents the direction of future agricultural development.