News

Do you wish to construct your own autonomous robot and participate in the international Field Robot Event? The CLAAS Foundation can help you – up to a maximum amount of 1500 Euro per team.

The next international Field Robot Event 2020 (18^th edition) will be in Erwitte/Lippstadt in Germany again together with the DLG Field Days on Tuesday 16th to Thursday 18th of June 2020. On behalf of the organising committee, we invite you to come with a student and/or professional team and participate in the event.

We joined the DLG Field Days already several times. The Field Days always focus on relevant topics in crop management & machine demonstrations. More information you find here on this webpage.

There will be special tasks for the robot competition in 2020:

– CONTEST: We will as soon as possible (probably in January) provide more details about the tasks. So far we inform you that we will focus first on the traditional challenges of navigating (task 1 and 2). In 2020 we will not anymore navigate through maize rows but between matured small pumpkins in rows. They will be arranged also in 75 cm row width but with around 40-50 cm spacing within the row. An example of the ‘crop plants’ you find here, they will perhaps vary in size and color.

For the application tasks 3 and 4 we suggest something new. The crop plants (pumpkins) from task 1 and 2 will be used within an artificial small landscape. This landscape patch will have some structures as consisting power poles, small trees, a pond etc. In task 3 the robots shall find the crop plants and provide information about them: number, position coordinates, volume etc. In task 4 the robots should again find the crop and move them out of the spot (harvesting).

The Free Style as task 5 will be as usual, we suggest. The banning of persons within the field during machine performance will continue. The ground condition is not clear yet. Perhaps it will be well maintained grass turf or it will be bare soil.

The extra design awarding which is independent from the contest performance will be continued.

– DEMO: We will invite more companies and research institutions to present their research prototypes, however they look as small or big. There will be some demonstration time schedules to show how the status is within this area of (close to) commercialization.

– TALKS: We will also invite speakers from our domain to give impressions about the state-of-the-art of robotics in agriculture. We will try to include also some team speakers to present whatever is interesting in relation to the FRE. The talks will be on or close to our contest area to allow students to listen whenever they have time. The FRE-talks will be included on the official DLG forum announcements.

Providing accommodation & catering will be the same as previous years. We will try to keep the total costs per student as event fee including everything – except your own travel costs – as low as possible. It will be not more than 100 euro per student. That’s it so far.

Hopefully you are coming and join us and have an interesting time with us. Winning is good, but learning, having fun & talks with colleagues is also nice. If you have any further good idea let us know, there is still some time to adjust.

FarmBeast showed a so-called automatic tool changer in the freestyle task. This is an implement with various tools such as a mower and a laser cutter. Depending on the task that has to be performed, a tool holder takes one of the tools and moves it to the object to be treated.

Helios evo and Carbonite ended up with the same number of points (105) and also TAFR and Dschubba had the same number of points (97)

If two or more teams have the same number of points for the overall ranking, the team with the better placements during all four tasks (1, 2, 3 and 4) will be ranked higher.

Which makes Helios evo the winner, a second place for Carbonite and a third place for TAFR. Dscubba became fourth.

The biggest robot in this year’s competition has managed to win this task without damaging any plant! It sprayed five weeds. The much smaller Helios evo damaged just one plant, sprayed three weeds and became second. The third place went to The Great Cornholio who sprayed the same number of plants as the winner but damaged fourteen plants.

In task 3, the robots scout for weeds and obstacles in the field. The great Cornholio detected the most; eight out of fourteen. Dschubba became second and Carbonite third.

In Task 2, newcomer Ceres has done an excellent job. They didn’t need manual correction or damaged any plants. The experienced Helios evo was slightly faster and won this task. Maizerunner finished in third place.

They did it again! Just as last year Carbonite wins the first task. The second place was for Floribot and Ceres became third.

Because of some questions about task 3, we clarified the rules and assessment of task 3, Field mapping. The new version of the task descriptions can be found in Downloads. The changes are marked yellow/green.

There are no straight rows this year. The actual layout of the row pattern is shown in this picture.

There are major changes in task 3 and 4:

For task 3, the robots are navigating autonomously. The robots shall detect weed patches represented by pink golf balls and obstacles represented by yellow tennis balls. Task 3 is conducted on the area used in task 2 with straight rows. The map created in this task will be used in task 4. Up to ten obstacles may be placed in the field, either between rows or in the headland. Obstacles must not be passed regardless of whether the robot can do so without touching them. Up to ten weeds may be placed in the field. All weeds will be placed between rows. The rules for entering the field, moving the robot, using remote controller etc. are the same as in task 1 and task 2.

In task 4 the main robot should be equipped with a crop sprayer capable of spraying water.
The robot may use the map created in task 3 to produce an optimised path that allows it to spray all of the weeds in the shortest possible time. Teams will be allowed 10 minutes to configure their robot for spraying and load an optimised path into its navigation system. The path optimisation process can be completed using a computer that is independent of the main robot, but this process must be completed within the 10 minute time window.
Alternatively, the robot may go without a map or an optimised path. Without an optimised path, it is more difficult to complete the task within 3 minutes.
The robots shall precisely spray the weeds mapped in task 3. It is not permitted to touch or pass the yellow tennis balls.

Hello everyone,

The place will be BUGA  (www.buga2019.de). It will be from 17.06. till 21.06. on the BUGA area in Heilbronn.

At the moment we are planning the tasks. They will be very similar to the last events, so there should be no surprise in the task description.

Greetings from Heilbronn