Researchers continue to discover ways to make use of the Agtech gadget

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Orchard researchers are working in their search for new uses for the Agtech device called a “Cartographer which is located at Agriculture Victoria’s Tatura SmartFarm. Cartographer, developed by AgTech company Green Atlas — is installed on an electric All-Terrain Vehicle on the farm. It uses a an array of cameras, scanners lighting, strobe lights and GPS to record the canopy, flower and fruit details from trees.

Agriculture Victoria Research Leader for Crop Physiology, Dr Ian Goodwin explained that the Cartographer first was tested as the 2020-2022 research study exploring the application of sensors for assessing the fruits’ quality, including peach the plum, nectarine, and apricot in order to export them.

“The Cartographer could travel through rows of orchards, capturing information from both sides of a row, at speeds of around 10 km/h. This makes it faster and more precise than manual processes and much far less labor intensive according to Dr. Goodwin.

Artificial Intelligence is used to detect fruits, count them and determine their characteristics from its cameras, including fruit size as well as hue to calculate the potential yields from harvest.

“The Cartographer has evolved into an extremely useful scientific tool to us, allowing us to quickly analyze an entire orchard block which is why we are employing it for a variety of research on orchards.

The Cartographer has been utilized for stone fruit study, research on apples and pear as well as for apple and pear research. We’re currently researching its potential economic benefits for farmers as an management instrument. The Cartographer is calibrated manually to ensure accurate counts of fruit, however, it’s entirely automated data collection for the size of the fruit color, colour and size of the canopy, so cost savings and ROI could be beneficial for growers.’

Mildura SmartFarm has also purchased an Cartographer for research purposes to assist researchers in analysing production and quality within their almond experiment orchard as well as in olive groves and citrus.


More information is available here:

Anna Ferguson

Agriculture Victoria

Tel. : +61 0499 540 475

agriculture.vic.gov.au

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