FUTURE FARMING
iVTInternational.com September 2019
19
3m
The expected
approximate width
of an individual
Feldschwarm unit
rough inexorable demand
for greater productivity, the
drive to increase power, weight and
process-area has pushed agricultural
machines to the margins of the
possible and the limits of their
dimensions. So runs the hypothesis
of Projekt Feldschwarm, a German
initiative to demonstrate how
modular machine swarms working
in concert can improve on the
functional density of an outsize
conventional tractor. Functional
density could otherwise be
advanced by using bre-composite
structures, increasing vehicle
working speeds or intensifying
process-area productivity, as with
the transition from walker to axial
threshing combines.
“Developing functional
density is a core competency for
manufacturers but also an empirical
process that takes a lot of time and
money,” says Professor omas
Herlitzius of the Technical
University of Dresden. “We must
consider new ways to increase
productivity without farmers
su ering on cost. Our idea is to
use smaller, modular systems with
a high degree of process-automation.”
e proposed system
redistributes productivity beyond
conventional machine limits
through collaborative robotics,
enabling a tractor to marshal one
or more autonomous modules,
or ‘cobots’, working alongside.
“Labor costs don’t increase
because one operator is supervising
several machines, but we can scale
productivity in smaller steps by
adding one machine,” Herlitzius
explains. Instead of the business
decision to buy a tractor obliging
farmers to plan eld-operations
which utilize its xed productivity,
modular swarms could allow them
to ne-scale productivity and
utilization at the operational level,
driving costs down.
140kW
The expected
power of a
Feldschwarm
unit
/iVTInternational.com
