As technology continues to shape every aspect of agriculture, a new contest is looking to get high school students thinking about new ways to put robots to work on the farm.
Launched this month, the AgRobotics Ontario Challenge will focus on using robotics to make farm workers safer, faster, and more competitive.
To help bring their ideas to life, groups from submitting schools will get a robotics kit supplied by the tech company Studica. Additionally, the six selected schools will develop a prototype of their ideas and display them at the Western Fair Association’s London Farm Show in March 20226.
The selected schools will also get $500 to help develop their design.
Chuck Baresich is the president of Haggerty Robotics, a company that currently develops robotics for farm applications. Among their products is a solar-powered vehicle that can seed and weed a field unguided by human hands.
Haggerty is also one of the partners in the contest, along with Innovation Farms Ontario, a network of farms that research and test new agricultural technologies.
“A lot of students are interested in technology, and we’re also interested in putting food on the table, so why not put those two together?” said Baresich. “This is an up-and-coming industry; there are literally billions of dollars being invested around the world in trying to improve agricultural production.”
Baresich said the need for tech solutions on farms is particularly pressing when it comes to harvesting crops and managing pests and weeds.
“Weeds just aren’t fun to deal with,” said Baresich. “[These machines] can work day and night, and they work fully autonomously without humans having to watch them all the time.”
Baresich said the technologies don’t necessarily mean the loss of jobs, but often allow farmers to shift the workforce to other tasks.
Baresich said there are many technologies that use robotics in controlled growing environments, such as greenhouses, but fewer farm robots that work out in the fields.
“In crops like apples, strawberries, fruit and those types of things, there’s lots of work to be done yet in that space,” he said.
The contest rules encourage students to come up with an idea that has a real-world application on the farm. Baresich’s hope is that the young minds will come up with some new approaches to farm problems.
The FarmDroid, an autonomous solar-powered seeder and weeder, was featured at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show near Woodstock, Ont. Chuck Baresich, the founder and president of Haggerty AgRobotics, explained what FarmDroid does and how it can improve farming operations.
“Sometimes we get used to doing things the same way all the time,” he said. “So perhaps some young minds can say, ‘What if we approached this from a different angle?’ That’s something we’re hoping for.”
Bridget Mahon, the agribusiness manager at Western Fair Association, said the contest might be a way for students to put their talents to solving problems in the farm environment for the first time.
“Most of the teachers we’ve heard from have a robotics club, their club may just not have been focused on agriculture,” she said.
Submissions for the contest are due in late November. The six contestant schools will be selected in early December.
More information about the contest and the submission portal is available here.
