June 2020

www.hpmag.co.uk HYDRAULICS & PNEUMATICS June 2020 19 sustainable way, with a continuous focus on reducing the amount and type of chemicals used. Drought, flooding and the appearance of new pests and diseases are, however, now a threat on all continents. Even Europe faces a challenge right across its farming systems. This is especially true of countries such as Italy, which faced a 57% plunge in its 2018 olive harvest – the worst in 25 years – as a result of climate have a lot of devices that need to ‘talk’ to each other. Our starting point was in fact a tracked vehicle that was originally built for moving along a beach and cleaning the shoreline!” There are two working SMASH prototypes – one for grapevines and the other for spinach – to cover the two different types of crops that were originally slated for research. The former has already undergone significant testing at a vineyard farm in the Pisa province, where Pencelli has been instrumental in demonstrating the possibilities that this robotic ecosystem could offer farmers. “SMASH is not a single machine, but a series of different devices including a robot, base station, drones and field sensors that together provide vital information to help farmers. A farmer could program the task that he wants SMASH to carry out, and while he is involved in other activities, this machine could move autonomously, monitoring crops, detecting and treating diseases, and saving the farmer or his workers significant time out in the fields manually checking crops.” Mapping and monitoring, weeding and feeding SMASH consists of a mobile base, a robotic arm featuring manipulators and vision systems, a drone and an ancillary ground station. Imagine a system that is designed to function across a range of precision agriculture technologies, offering specific insights on geomatics, robotics, data mining, machine learning etc, while taking into account the environmental and social issues facing farmers. For Pencelli, the possibilities for SMASH are endless: “In addition to all the functions that can be performed by the robotic arm, we also have some attachments that can be mounted on the back of the vehicle for mechanical manipulation (including precision spraying), sensor integration for positioning technologies, and autonomous navigation and software development for the control of the system’s mobile base (in collaboration with other partners). For YRE’s modelling and control engineer Manuel Pencelli, developing a prototype agro-bot that could be used to monitor and control crops, take soil samples for analysis and accurately target change, according to scientists. With its European research facility nestled in the hills above Florence, Italy, Yanmar R&D Europe (YRE) is well placed to focus on a variety of field-based studies to bring added value to the agriculture industry – and possibly even attract a new generation of workers to the land. These include the two-year, four-million Euros ‘SMASH’ project being carried out in cooperation with 10 technology partners to develop a mobile agricultural ‘eco-system’ to monitor, analyse and manage agricultural crops. The acronym stands for ‘Smart Machine for Agricultural Solutions Hightech’, and this project was co- financed by the Tuscany local government. It consists of the development of a modular robotic platform that employs the latest information communications technology to examine crops and soils, analyse gathered information and provide clear, actionable information to farmers to support crop management. One of Yanmar’s many roles was to develop control systems for the multipurpose robotic arm for mobile agricultural chemicals for precision application, required many different areas of expertise from the beginning of the project. “There have been many partners involved throughout. We needed mechanical expertise for developing the structure of the vehicle, and many ‘communications’ experts because we Yanmar R&D Europe researcher Manuel Pencelli operates the robot in a test lab. The SMASH robot being tested at a vineyard near Pisa, Italy. Professor Marco Vieri: “Farming provides food, feed, fibre and fuel for humans, but we also have to consider rural, cultural and historical issues.”