ABB Robotics is supporting Junglekeepers in their mission to protect 55,000 acres of Amazon rainforest and reverse deforestation. In a first-of-its-kind demonstration, ABB’s cobot YuMi is automating planting tasks in a jungle laboratory, speeding the process and allowing Junglekeepers’ volunteers to focus their valuable time and resources on more impactful work.

Through ABB RobotStudio Cloud technology, ABB experts simulate, refine and deploy the programming required for YuMi’s tasks in the jungle from 12,000 kms (7,460 miles) away Västerås, Sweden – enabling the world’s most remote robot.

“ABB’s collaboration with Junglekeepers demonstrates how robotics and Cloud technology can play a central role in fighting deforestation as one of the major contributors to climate change”, said Sami Atiya, President of ABB Robotics and Discrete Automation. “Our pilot program with the world’s most remote robot is helping automate highly repetitive tasks, freeing up rangers to undertake more important work out in the rainforest and helping them to conserve the land they live on.”

In a jungle lab, located in a remote region of the Peruvian Amazon, a YuMi cobot has been installed to automate essential tasks in the seed planting process, usually an entirely manual effort. The cobot digs a hole in the soil, drops the seed in, compacts the soil on top and marks it with a color-coded tag. YuMi enables Junglekeepers to replant an area the size of two soccer fields every day in zones requiring reforestation.

At the same time, by automating this task, Junglekeepers’ volunteers are able to focus their valuable time and resources on more impactful work, such as patrolling the area to deter illegal loggers, educating locals on the preservation of the rainforest and planting mature saplings.

Creating a fully remote and autonomous cobot installation also overcomes the difficulty of finding people willing to stay and work in the distant jungle location. After its initial installation, YuMi can carry out its tasks autonomously, with only trouble shooting as needed.

“As of right now, we have lost 20 percent of the total area of Amazon rainforest; without using technology today, conservation will be at a standstill,” said Moshin Kazmi, co-founder of Junglekeepers. “Having Yumi at our base is a great way to expose our rangers to new ways of doing things.  It accelerates and expands our operations and advances our mission.”

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest through human activities such as logging and burning to clear land for agriculture are contributing to the devastating effects of climate change. It is estimated that more than 870,000 km² of the Amazon rainforest have been cleared since 1985, an area larger than France, United Kingdom and Belgium combined.  With tens of billions of trees already being gone, the region is warming fast.

“The Amazon is in danger. That’s why we need technology, science and local knowledge to work together in order to save it. Otherwise, we will be too late. The rainforest can be saved, but we must bring together all these elements to make a difference,” said Dennis del Castillo Torres, director of forest management research at the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute. “It is very important to have a combination of high technology and conservation. There are many technologies that we can use to preserve the forest, and this robot can help a lot to reforest faster, but we have to be very selective. We have to use it in areas of high deforestation to speed up the process of replanting.”

The pilot project is supported by ABB’s RobotStudio Cloud technology, enabling teams all over the world to collaborate in real time. This remote new way of programming enables new levels of flexibility and instant refinement, resulting in greater efficiency and resilience, and no loss of planting time. With more than 25 years of offline programming experience, RobotStudio enables 99 percent accuracy between simulation and reality. This allows users to reduce time for testing robotic solutions by 50 percent and takes production downtimes to zero.

ABB Robotics’ pilot project in the Amazon furthers its objective to contribute to sustainable transformation through intelligent robotics and automation solutions, supporting businesses to increase productivity, reduce waste and maximize efficiency. In 2022, ABB Robotics collaborated with the Parley Global Cleanup network, a non-profit organisation collecting marine plastic waste, to create personalized designer items such as recycled furniture, using 3D additive printing.

In accordance with the wishes of Junglekeepers, the pilot scheme in the rainforest with RobotStudio Cloud and YuMi will last for approximately six weeks. Following the conclusion of the pilot program, ABB will explore opportunities to assist Junglekeepers on a more extended basis as well as exploring further opportunities for its robotic solutions and cloud technologies to play a central role in driving sustainable transformation.

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The team is working on a project funded by Innovate UK and includes experts from the Grimme agricultural machinery factory, the Agri-EPI Centre (Edinburgh UK), Harper Adams University (Newport UK), the Centre for Machine Vision at the University of the West of England (Bristol) and two of the UK’s largest salad producers, G’s Fresh and PDM Produce.

Within the project, existing leek harvesting machinery is adapted to lift the lettuce clear from the ground and grip it in between pinch belts. The lettuce’s outer, or ‘wrapper’, leaves will be mechanically removed to expose the stem. Machine vision and artificial intelligence are then used to identify a precise cut point on the stem to neatly separate the head of lettuce.

“The cutting process of an iceberg is the most technically complicated step in the process to automate, according to teammates from G subsidiary Salad Harvesting Services,” explains IDS product sales specialist Rob Webb. “The prototype harvesting robot being built incorporates a GigE Vision camera from the uEye FA family. It is considered to be particularly robust and is therefore ideally suited to demanding environments. As this is an outdoor application, a housing with IP65/67 protection is required here.”

The choice fell on the GV-5280FA-C-HQ model with the compact 2/3in global shutter CMOS sensor IMX264 from Sony. “The sensor was chosen mainly because of its versatility. We don’t need full resolution for AI processing, so sensitivity can be increased by binning. The larger sensor format means that wide-angle optics are not needed either,” says Webb.

In the application, the CMOS sensor convinces with excellent image quality, light sensitivity and exceptionally high dynamic range and delivers almost noise-free, very high-contrast 5 MP images in 5:4 format at 22 fps – even in applications with fluctuating light conditions.

The extensive range of accessories, such as lens tubes and trailing cables, is just as tough as the camera housing and the screwable connectors (8-pin M12 connector with X-coding and 8-pin Binder connector). Another advantage: camera-internal functions such as pixel pre-processing, LUT or gamma reduce the required computer power to a minimum.

The prototype of the robotic mower will be used for field trials in England towards the end of the 2021 season. “We are delighted to be involved in the project and look forward to seeing the results. We are convinced of its potential to automate and increase the efficiency of the lettuce harvest, not only in terms of compensating for the lack of seasonal workers,” affirms Jan Hartmann, managing director of IDS.

The agriculture of the future is based on networked devices and automation. Cameras are an important building block, and artificial intelligence is a central technology here. Smart applications such as harvesting robots can make a significant contribution to this.

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Use of herbicides in farming has come under close scrutiny in recent years, with questions being asked about the environmental consequences of indiscriminate weed killing regimes. Further, at a time when the cost of herbicides has increased by around 50%, it is estimated that a blanket approach results in the wastage of about 95% of the chemicals.

A solution to the problem comes from the Small Robot Company (SRC). Andy Hall, head of prototyping at SRC, said: “The opportunity here is for selective weeding rather than blanket weeding, delivering a per-plant farming approach.”

For example, there is a benefit in keeping weeds such as clover, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form. But farmers want to eliminate harmful weeds such as black grass, which it is estimated costs the farming industry in the UK some £400m per year, and rising.

The solution from SRC is built around two autonomous robots. The first, named Tom, is equipped with cameras and a GPS system to photograph and tag the location of every plant in a field. A cloud-based AI system, named Wilma, then processes the data to differentiate between crop plants, ecologically useful weeds and harmful weeds.

Using this data, the farmer can make informed decisions about which weeds need to be killed. And this is where the second robot, Dick, comes into play, with on-board technology to enable weed killing on an individual plant basis.

Currently at working prototype stage, Dick is a lightweight robot that runs on four wheels, minimising ground compaction. Suspended beneath it are four Igus delta robots, each equipped with a voltage carrying tip. At each weed killing site, the delta robot touches the weed with the tip and a high voltage is transmitted into it to kill it.

Delta robot arms from Igus were selected for their precision, low-cost and lubrication-free engineering. The delta robot is built around standard Igus drylin self-lubricating plastic parts in an aluminium linear system. Lightweight and inherently resistant to dust and dirt, it has proved ideal for use in the challenging farm environment, as well as being ecologically friendly since no lubricants are required.

An essential feature of the delta and Igus components is they are lubrication-free. Lubricated moving parts like the belt drive and bearings would potentially clog up with soil and water in a muddy field, but Igus polymers and parts are designed to be dry running.

Hall added: “With the plastic parts being lubrication-free, it’s also an environmentally friendly solution. The delta robot is also very robust, and it’s very strong – in fact it’s surprised us just how strong it is. Further, the controller is not affected by the high voltages being transmitted through the tip, and programming is easy – we found it very easy to code it ourselves.”

With this robotic approach, SRC is looking to offer a ‘Farming-as-a-Service’ model to tackling the problem of weed control. SRC and Igus are looking to work on different actions, where Tom and Dick could combine again for spot spraying, spot fertilizing or slug killing, for example.

“The milestone we’ve hit is that we can now take action at the plant level,” said Hall. “Using artificial intelligence, the robots can recognise the weeds and target the robotic arm onto those weeds. At that point we can do anything we want. Our robotic platform incorporating the Igus arm could have many different technologies bolted on – and the world’s our oyster on that.”

Igus UK managing director Matthew Aldridge commented: “Because the delta is lightweight and low-cost it has opened up new opportunities for these robots to be used in mobile applications, proving a new technology in a harsh outdoor environment. Igus is planning to work with SRC on new industrial applications where precise and low impact actions are needed on farms and potentially other scenarios.”

Ben Scott-Robinson, CEO and co-founder, Small Robot Company, said: “To prove the power of per plant farming, we are focused on answering the biggest problem that farmers face at the moment, which is weeding. We’ve proved we can deliver per plant weeding: a world first. The focus for us now is being able to move forward to deliver this repeatedly, and at scale. This will be game-changing.”

Following successful field trials, the next stage for Tom and Dick are efficacy trials, measuring the force required to destroy the weeds, including the comparison of different varieties, to ensure that they are destroyed rather than partially killed.

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