Strategic Elements Ltd (ASX:SOR) subsidiary Stealth Technologies has demonstrated the potential of its automation & robotics platform (AxV) for use in the multi-billion-dollar global agriculture sector.
Work with collaborators - the Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative and the University of Western Australia School of Agriculture and Environment - has assisted the company to achieve early-stage validation.
Further optimisation and engineering leading to an expanded technology demonstration across multiple potential end-user reference sites will be conducted.
Stealth has also filed patent protection covering a weed detection device, including the arrangement of sensors on a moving vehicle platform, algorithms, methods of weed detection, and software to process crop data from a moving vehicle to estimate locations of weeds.
Seeking right partners
Strategic Elements managing director Charles Murphy said: “Our strategy to build a platform that had applications across multiple industry sectors is starting to fulfil its promise.
“Our commercialisation strategy is to collaborate closely with end-users to solve a real, existing problem with automation.
“From an Australian domestic market context, other sectors like logistics and mining also have attractive opportunities and we are very active in seeking the right partners with which to collaborate.”
Development progress
Stealth, UWA and AHRI collected logistics and in-field scoping data from a large scale broadacre farm in WA (reference farm) to enable detection of weeds protruding above the canopy of a barley crop.
Weed detection prototype hardware was developed and installed onto a combine harvester during harvest.
Algorithms were then developed, tested and validated by comparing the location of weeds detected by the technology, with known locations of weeds with visual confirmation.
On a limited data set, the technology was able to detect 100% of weeds with a height threshold of 20cm above crop canopy.
Significantly, the technology was able to detect weeds from the barley crop, notwithstanding the fact that both were brown in colour and barely distinguishable to the human eye.
Currently available technologies using computer vision solutions would be unable to replicate these results.
Cost of weeds
SOR is taking a different approach by leveraging the sophisticated sensor, mapping and localisation technology already built and used in its Autonomous Security Vehicle collaboration with US Fortune 100 Company ‘Honeywell’.
The need for excessive use of chemicals and production loss costs are significant issues for the global agricultural industry.
In Australian cropping systems alone the estimated cost of weeds is A$3.3 billion annually while the total annual cost of weeds in the US is estimated at US$34.5 billion.
Alternative agronomic techniques to target weeds
Traditionally, farmers have treated weeds in large-scale crop farming with the mass universal application of herbicides but weeds are becoming herbicide-resistant, forcing farmers to use targeted herbicides that are more expensive.
They can also lead to new generations of weeds resistant to these new herbicides.
A solution is to use alternative agronomic techniques to target weeds.
This can include spot application of herbicides, increasing the seed rate over known weed areas when planting crops to starve out weeds during the season and increasing fertiliser rates within paddocks over weed locations during the season.
Value proposition
The value proposition for Stealth is to deploy this technology to farms around the world where large-scale crop farming exists.
This includes not just crops such as wheat and barley but could be extended to corn, canola, and other large-scale crop types.
The usage of this technology, together with agronomic techniques that can leverage weed location knowledge could dramatically decrease herbicide input costs to farming, whilst maximising crop yields making farming more efficient and profitable for farmers.
Milestones and schedule of work
Further work to optimise the weed detection technology for different environments, crop types and deployment scenarios will be carried out in the second quarter.
In the third and fourth quarters, the company will advance the technology into a versatile and easy to use package that can be installed by farmers onto a wider range of farm equipment – from combine harvesters to sprayers and other farm equipment.
Demonstration scale-up – increasing end-user reference sites at multiple sites and in different environments will take place in the third and fourth quarters.
A program is being developed to deploy the weed detection technology to at least 10 potential end customer reference sites in the November 2021 harvest.