Remote control of 4 unmanned tractors World's first, simultaneously from dozens of kilometers

Remote control while watching the monitor in the control room (5th, in Iwamizawa, Hokkaido)

On the 5th, four parties, including Hokkaido University and Iwamizawa City, Hokkaido, conducted a demonstration experiment in which a total of four tractors were simultaneously driven unmanned on multiple farmlands dozens of kilometers away from a control room in the city. According to the university, this is the world's first demonstration of operating multiple "level 3" agricultural machines simultaneously under remote monitoring, which do not require nearby monitoring when running. Relevant organizations have high hopes that this technology will enable them to save labor while maintaining farmland areas even as the number of farmers decreases. The unmanned agricultural machinery was monitored and operated through a monitor from a control room set up in the city. There are three farmlands in total, one in Iwamizawa City, about 7 kilometers away from the control room, and the other in Sapporo City, about 40 kilometers away. Agricultural machinery basically runs automatically. In the demonstration, unmanned vehicles were dispatched from warehouses and other locations to enter farmland. At a farm in Iwamizawa City, a work machine was used to cut oats for plowing.

Almost no time lag in instructions

　The communication environment utilizes the next-generation high-speed communication standard "5G". When it was difficult to receive radio waves from the global positioning system (GNSS), which is used for automatic steering when moving on farm roads, it was switched to remote operation from the control room. Kazuki Michishita, 45, who visited Iwamizawa to see the plant grow wheat and soybeans on 56 hectares of land, said, "I was impressed by the fact that there was almost no time lag in remote instruction. bottom. Professor Shin Noguchi of Hokkaido University, who is leading the research, said, "Especially in areas such as Hokkaido, where scale expansion is progressing, we want to make it possible for farmers to maintain their production base without stopping farming even if there is a shortage of workers."

Japan Agricultural Newspaper