The Farmers Mart Feb-Mar 2018 - Issue 55 | Page 60

60 TECHNOLOGY
FEB/MAR 2018 • farmers-mart.co.uk
Q&A WITH KIT FRANKLIN
– HANDS FREE HECTARE
Recently Jason caught up with Kit Franklin to talk about
the Hands-Free Project and the future of Farming.
KIT Franklin is an agricultural lec-
turer at Harper Adams University
and a member of the Hands-Free
Project, that grabbed headlines
around the world. Harper Adams
University and Precision Deci-
sions, a UK precision farming ser-
vices firm, launched the Hands-
Free Hectare project last year. The
team farmed a hectare of spring
barley using entirely autonomous
machines. The aim was to show
that it was possible to grow and
harvest a crop completely hand-
free. Kit also led the team that
developed the system to drill the
field.
Kit first became interested in en-
gineering whilst on the family farm
as a youngster, and he now wants
to show the public how scientif-
ically and technically advanced
farming has become.
What prompted you
to set up the hands-
free project?
To push things forward,
Jonathan and I felt the rhetoric
around agricultural automation
had got stuck in a rut with no
clear leaps forward. We had a
novel way of automating equip-
ment with the open source done
technologies but now we must
do more than “car park” demon-
stration.
What did you originally
hope to achieve with the
hand free project?
To show that there was no
technological barrier to autono-
mous field agriculture, challenging
common public perception and
to showcase the capability/possi-
bilities of harnessing Open Source
technologies.
What were some of the
major issues you had
to overcome during the
hands-free project? What changes have
you made going into
the second year of
the project?
Time constraints were our
biggest challenge, we knew
everything was possible but the
time available was limited get
things working as well as they pos-
sibly could. In terms of technical,
the guidance was hard to tune to
a point where we were happy, in
fact it took up until harvest to get a
straight run we were happy with. We have added some hardware
which smooths GPS signals, this
has improved straightness of the
driving (improving filed coverage)
also we are looking to bring in
more crop sensing to aid Kieran
Walsh with the agronomy.
Was the project more
successful than originally
anticipated?
In terms of automation and
field operations the project met
our ambitions, in terms of media
coverage and public interest it
has been ten times what we could
have hope.
‘ possible to grow
and harvest a
crop completely
hand-free
’
What’s next for the
hands-free project?
We the HFH team are looking to
work on ag automation interna-
tionally and nearer home we are
looking to improve yield this year
with improved field coverage and
agronomy.
What are the benefits for
a farmer utilising some of
the technology available?
Technology such as drone and
IOT sensing give the farmer an extra
level of information, this can poten-
tially give early warning of a prob-
lem therefore a timelier reaction
can be made improving results.
Will we see the end of
large scale machinery
on the farm at some
point in the future?
I would like to see a reduction
in the size of machinery for the
sake of precision and for our soils.
If small automation can prove to
be effective, I don’t see why this
won’t happen.