| On Topic
improve our technology, which we haven’t been
able to do while growing cereal crops in the
field.
“During the past two years we’ve come
across a number of technological challenges
that we simply haven’t had the time to
overcome. This next year is a great opportunity
to address them.
“We’ll also be taking on new and exciting
challenges, including working on our tractor so
that it can drive itself from the shed to the field.
We plan to integrate technology from self-
driving cars and will need to get the tractor
interacting with its surroundings, including, for
example, the gate so that it opens and closes
when the tractor enters the hectare.”
Kit Franklin, Agricultural Engineering
Lecturer added: “We’ve had an amazing couple
of years, and we’d like to thank all of our
sponsors and supporters for all of their help; we
couldn’t have done it without them.
“From the first year of the project, we gained
worldwide attention, with articles, blogs and
broadcast items appearing in 85 countries.
Following this, we were invited to talk at
conferences and events in various countries,
www.farmingmonthly.co.uk
including me speaking at the prestigious
Oxford Farming Conference at the start of this
year, which to achieve at only 27-years-old was
amazing.
“Then in June we held live demonstrations of
the combine harvester at Cereals, which was
the first time it had been operated outside of
the plot at the university. Although the first
demonstration didn’t go to plan the second
went incredibly smoothly, but that’s what we’re
all about. We want to share the bumps along
the road; the warts and all. This is the first time
it's ever been done in the world, so we always
knew it wouldn’t be easy.
“The successful demonstration was then
followed by a rush to get from Cambridge to
Bristol for the BBC Food and Farming Awards,
where we were extremely pleased to be
awarded their Future Food Award.
“We’ve also been to Buckingham Palace this
year, where the University was awarded its
Queen’s Anniversary Prize, and we’ve received
the Institution of Agricultural Engineers (IAgrE)
Team Achievement Award.
“The HFHa has been a life-changing project
that we’re all so pleased to have had a part in.”
The Hands Free Hectare is a
project, run by Harper Adams
University, based in Shropshire,
England and Precision Decisions in
York, England, that set out in
October 2016 to be the first in the
world to plant, tend and harvest a
crop remotely, using automated
machines.
The first crop of spring barley was
successfully harvested in
September 2017 and the second
crop, which this press releases
relates to, was winter wheat.
September 2018 | Farming Monthly | 11