FeedCarrier - Autonom, robust og fleksible fôringsrobot og kjøkken

The agriculture industry is currently experiencing a digital revolution. Agriculture is getting smarter – sensors and other technologies are increasingly being employed to reduce manual labour, increase production and quality, and improve animal welfare. Despite these changes, feeding of livestock today is largely done with tractor and manual equipment, which is time consuming and carries the risk of injury to workers. Feed content must also be adjusted regularly, to control for large variations in quality due to seasonal or climactic variations. But today's manual workflow for collecting and analysing feed content is too slow to give proper feedback to the farmer – reducing animal welfare and productivity. An automatic feeding system that analyses, fills, and distributes feed fully automatically is safer and better utilises the farmer's working hours, and the timing and quantity of food delivery can be controlled precisely to optimise animal welfare and productivity. TKS Agri is today a leading supplier of rail-based, roof-hung automatic feeding systems. This solution is suitable for newer farms in Nordic conditions, where building requirements make the roof construction strong enough to withstand the installation of the system, but unsuitable in many other countries or for older farms. Additionally, European farms typically consist of several separated buildings, making rail-based solutions difficult and expensive to install or modify. In FeedCarrier (2019-2023), TKS Agri, Felleskjøpet, and Orkel along with research partners SINTEF Digital and NMBU set out to address these limitations by developing a ground-breaking autonomous feed delivery robot that was not dependent on rails or other expensive infrastructure and could be flexibly employed in various environments, together with a smart feed kitchen capable of automatically sensing and optimising feed quality to meet animal dietary needs and improve productivity. Successful outcomes from the project include new technology prototypes: • An autonomous feed delivery robot with minimum 800 kg feed capacity. • A smart feed kitchen with integrated sensors for automatically measuring feed quality. • Feed management software for optimising meal plans for each animal group based on their dietary requirements and the cost and quality of available feedstuffs. • Logistics management software for dynamic scheduling and routing of the feed robot and feed kitchen. • A farm coordinator dashboard with user controls, visualisation of system status, and simulator. Additional outcomes include new knowledge generated on the dynamic feeding of livestock, optimisation of farm logistics, and positioning of autonomous vehicles in farm environments. Findings from these studies have, where appropriate, been disseminated to the wider community through academic publication and have led to ongoing research on optimisation of farm logistics in two masters’ theses. Commercially, FeedCarrier has enabled TKS Agri to pivot for the Agri 4.0 market with tangible outcomes including a new product strategy and distribution agreement with Felleskjøpet for TKS Agri’s new product lines. The FeedCarrier project concluded with field trials of the technology prototypes and integrated system at TKS Agri’s facility and the unveiling of the TKS FeedCarrier product line at Agrovisjon in Nov, 2022 – where the FeedCarrier prototype was awarded the prize for “Årets nyhet” for indoor mechanisation.

During the FeedCarrier project, new technologies were developed for a revolutionary precision feeding system, including an autonomous feed robot, smart feed kitchen, feed management software, logistics managements software, and coordinator dashboard. These technologies will form the basis for a new precision feeding product line at TKS Agri that will give farmers more precise control of feed preparation and delivery as well as enabling them to optimise meals based on the actual quality of their feed, cost of concentrates, and dietary requirements of their animals, in addition to other logistical constraints. Furthermore, TKS Agri has also assisted in the development of a new decision support tool for farmers based on multispectral satellite imagery that can be used to measure crop quality in the field prior to harvesting, which when combined with silage models can be used to predict silage quality that will be available for feeding. These technologies are all aimed at providing the farmer with more accurate information that is relevant for the individual farm and animal groups as well as tools for simplifying decision making related to feed production and preparation. By bringing these technologies to market first in Norway, TKS Agri will empower Norwegian dairy farmers with a technological advantage, enabling smarter and more efficient resource usage on the farm, reduced wastage, and improved productivity and animal wellbeing. These benefits will improve the livelihood of Norwegian dairy farms, with flow-on benefits for the wider society. Smarter resource usage and reduced wastage will also help to decrease the environmental footprint of dairy farming, with benefits to the local environment including reduced run-off and emissions, reduced dependence on feed concentrates, and reduced usage of fossil fuel-driven machinery. As a Norwegian manufacturer on the European stage, these new technologies will also help to position Norway as a technological leader within the agricultural sector, with flow-on benefits for other sectors through improved competence within the fields of machine learning, autonomous systems, plant and animal science, IoT, and many others. This project has directly helped to build these competencies within the project group and disseminated new knowledge within these fields to the wider community through academic publication.

I FeedCarrier vil vi utvikle en robust bakkegående autonom utfôringsrobot med tilhørende fôrkjøkken for kostnadseffektiv drift og bedre dyrevelferd basert på tre nyvinninger: En robust og rimelig innen- og utendørs navigeringsløsning for krevende miljøer, et smart fôrkjøkken som optimaliserer resepter og gir jevn fôrkvalitet, utfôringsenheter som har smart oppdragsplanlegging som samarbeider ved bruk av svermteknologi. Utfôring til husdyr gjøres i dag i stor grad manuelt og tar mye av bondens tid. En del utfôring gjøres også automatisk, men disse systemene er ikke optimalisert. Prosjektet vil ha som formål å utvikle et automatisk fôringssystem som er optimalisert med hensyn til best mulig produktivitet, kvalitet og dyrevelferd. Senere års klimautvikling har økt sesongvariasjonene og avlingsresultatene, noe som påvirker og gir variasjoner i fôrkvaliteten til dyrene. Prosjektet har som formål å utvikle metoder for å unngå slike variasjoner og bidra til bedre dyrehelse og ressurs utnyttelse. Den mest sentrale utfordringen vil bli å utvikle en navigering for innen- og utendørs bruk for gårdsmiljøer, og ta hensyn til kollisjonsunngåelse for mennesker, dyr og andre kjøretøy. Sentralt står utvikling av verktøy for å tilpasse systemet til ulike størrelser basert på fôrgrunnlag og besetningsstørrelse. Prosjektresultater vil bli anvendt til å øke ressursutnyttelsen av fôret, øke produktiviteten i dyrehold og øke dyrehelsen. Prosjektet har også til hensikt å gi de involverte bedriftene kunnskap om og forståelsen av hvilken betydning fôring har for dyrehelse, og basert på denne innsikten kunne videreutvikle produkter og tjenester.