Revival of the sugar beet: chopping robots successfully tested

The Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE) is presenting a fully automated robot for weed control in sugar beet cultivation in Brandenburg for the first time.

The sugar beet belongs to the Uckermark like the cucumber belongs to the Spreewald. But its cultivation is on the decline in the region. It is too costly. Weeds have to be removed regularly throughout the growing season in order to achieve good yields. This is why pesticides are used in conventional cultivation and hoes in organic farming. Both methods are suboptimal because they are either harmful to the environment or too expensive. "Nevertheless, sugar beet cultivation is worthwhile because its sugar is in high demand, especially in the organic sector, and because its cultivation improves soil properties," explains Amanda Birkmann from HNEE.
In the zUCKERrübe research project, the scientists are relying on AI and robotics to solve the problem in a timely manner, especially for organic farming. "We have developed a robot that moves autonomously across the field to remove weeds from sugar beet," summarises Amanda Birkmann. A first test run was successful on Monday, 2 May 2022, at the Gut Wilmersdorf teaching and research station (Brandenburg). "We have seen that the hoeing robot can cope with the difficult terrain and that the AI-based image analysis works. It can reliably distinguish weeds from sugar beet," reports Dr Marcin Brzozowski, AI expert at the IHP - Leibniz Institute for Innovative Microelectronics in Frankfurt (Oder). The robot also works without fossil fuels. It is battery-powered and has solar panels that allow it to utilise solar energy for propulsion in good weather.
In the coming vegetation period, the device, which weighs around 100 kilograms, will regularly drive across the field. The aim is to compare the efficiency of weed control with other methods, such as the use of a row finger hoe. The scientific team is also working on using a drone as support. In future, it will communicate with the robot, detect its location and inform it where there is a weed problem. "This means that both can also be used in areas with poor mobile phone reception, because the weed detection is carried out on drones and not on cloud servers," adds Marcin Brzozowski.

More information about the project
WIR!-Region 4.0-Verbundprojekt-zUCKERrübe Cultivation method development using innovative field robotics, UAS & practical research for organic sugar beet cultivation in the Uckermark, sub-project 1: Participatory cultivation method development
Duration 05/2021 - 04/2023

Project partners
Zauberzeug GmbH, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) e. V., IHP GmbH - Innovations for High Performance Microelectronics; Leibniz Institute for Innovative Microelectronics, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE)

Cooperation partners
Landwirtschaftsbetrieb Paulsen, Gut Wilmersdorf, Gut Klepelshagen and Gut Ravensmühle, Zuckerfabrik Anklam

Sponsor
WIR! Initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)