OMNiPOWER Kicks Off its Third Season

Autonomous Collaborations

OMNiPOWER Kicks Off its Third Season

The confidence gained from two years of operations has led to the Olds College Smart Farm relying on OMNiPOWER to perform seeding, spraying and spreading duties in the 2022 growing season. The Olds College applied research team working with OMNiPOWER is confident stating that autonomous technology is available and mature enough for broad acre farming.

The Olds College Smart Farm has made substantial progress in two years of autonomous operations with OMNiPOWER due to a dedicated and expanded team (which includes current and former Olds College students), increased data capture with new electronic data collection technology Somat-eDAQ, and increased “hands-off” time.

Team members are also performing comparable autonomous data collection in the 2022 growing season with realtime digital data from Somat-eDAQ. The device electronically collects location specific data (GPS) and equipment data (CAN bus) at a rate of two times a second, and is typically installed on OMNiPOWER. This growing season, when OMNiPOWER is not performing a mission, the Somat-eDAQ is transferred into a carrying case and used to collect data in conventional equipment. It will collect data, such as measuring field efficiency and route efficiency, that can be compared to OMNiPOWER for evaluating autonomous versus conventional equipment.

Olds College looks forward to sharing the data collection results and grand totals from the third year of OMNiPOWER operations after harvest — and talking about what’s next in autonomous equipment applied research on the Smart Farm.

Synchronous Operations

As a potential first in agricultural history, OMNiPOWER was part of synchronous operations on Antler Valley Farm in May 2022. One operator, Wade McAllister of Antler Valley Farm, controlled two seeders: a traditional one (60’) and Raven Precision OMNiPOWER (30’). Olds College OMNiPOWER with its SeedMaster DSR 30’ Air Seeder implement completed 30 per cent (43 of 142 acres) during a regular seeding mission on Antler Valley Farm to improve efficiency.