Autonomous Machinery (webinar)

Transcript

Autonomous Machinery

Well thank you everybody for coming along. It's a fantastic response to our webinar so far, and I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land, which we all meet today, the lands we all meet from today. And I'd like to pay my respects to elders past and present. This webinar is a first in a series of webinars I'm hoping to run on the last Thursday of every month with a timely piece of technology that's relevant to growers within the horticulture space.

But today we're hearing from Cam from Agri Automation Australia with their GO Track system, which is a retrofit system that goes on, that's retrofit auto drive system for existing tractors. And from the US we've got the guys behind the Burro self-driving platform. If everybody can hold onto their questions or post questions in the q and a function, we'll get to all those questions after the presentations. I'd also like to say that we are recording this presentation and hopefully to distribute later. So if you're a bit worried about being able to be recognized, change your name to something, to anonymous. Over to you Cam.

Thank you very much Andy. Much appreciated, the invitation to present on the Ag Victoria webinar and from my side, managing director of Agri Automation Australia we specialize in automation and technology in the AgTech sector. Also like to introduce Chris Thiesene from Burro Agri Automation and Australia and New Zealand as a very proud distributor of the Burro product. And thanks to Chris for staying up late and taking us through the product today. So, take it away, Chris.

All right, so let me give you, let me take one second to share my screen. We'll jump right into it. So, again, cam and Andy, thanks for having me as well to be a part of this. Love every opportunity that we have to talk about Burrow and to kind of showcase what we're doing and how we're being applied around the world, really. So Cam, real quick. Can you see my screen?

Yes. Okay, perfect. All right quick introduction on myself, Chris Thiesene here at Burro .I'm our head of California Sales and Support. However California, we're not limited to California. Cam has and the team both in Australia and New Zealand have come on board and done an excellent job starting to promote and really get the word out and already start lining up orders for the equipment that they have headed their way right now.

My background, I come out of farming, so I grew up in stone fruit, so your peach, plum, nectar, and apricot. Went into construction for a little while, so I got a little bit of logistics and management background. And then I came back to commercial farming where I managed same thing, stone fruit table, grapes, citrus, a little bit of kiwi and persimmon.

From there we were looking to, to get Burrough into our operations, but Burrough was still pretty, pretty young at that time. So right as Covid hit, I hopped on board with Burrow, and it's been an awesome ride. So, moving on. Growing up, kind of one of the main things or some of the main pressures that you would talk about around the dinner table, right, would be water weather and obviously labour. And so the main thing that we're trying to accomplish here at Burro is with the ability to carry things, to tow things, to follow people around while carrying things. You're really able to take away or take away a lot of that non-productive time when you're walking around or moving fruit out of the field or from a tree to a, to a trailer and whatnot. And over the last three years, we're going into our fourth year right now with about 55,000 autonomous miles roughly travelled to date, fleet-wide. We have a couple hundred Burros on the ground with customers now. We're expected to have a few more hundred delivered by the end of the year. And to really accomplish work in the field and autonomy in the field, you really have to have this plug and play solution that is in our terms, popup autonomy. So the ability to take a robot to a field, get a team of six to eight people per robot running with that robot. All really quickly and really rapidly without pre-planning. That's really the name of the game and the goal. And so as you can see on the screen right now, the goal is to get to the point where we can have attachments that hop on or connect onto row as well. So things like a mower we're working on ourselves things like the Bumblebee pollination equipment that, that you saw as well. Those are all things that we're working on and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit, but really we feel like it's the first steps towards more mobility and more autonomy in the field.

Alright, so let me see if this will go to the next slide. There we go. Before we really get into much else, we'll talk about the autonomy or anatomy of the Burro. So we have a touchscreen up at the first or at the front of borough that you're Burro to control to give it cues. Follow you, train a route, things like that. And then you have a top tray with many mounting options. And then inside that brain box, what we call it, you have high power processing where you can only, you can not only use that for the autonomy, but you can also interface with that, with things like dip wise we process their software on board. And I think I have a slide that shows a little bit more of that, about that than it as well. For our connectivity, we have LTE and radio, so the LTEs for all your cell connectivity. And then you have an online dashboard that you can view the fleet and each Burro's stats individually. We have a radio that connects with our RTK-GPS base station, and then we have the RTK-GPS base or GPS unit itself on the Burros so you have that triangulation. Four independent motors, and we have capacity for swappable batteries with our advanced tow package, you have the ability to actually also add four batteries on top and expand your charge time or your run time and your battery capacity, three x. In addition to that, we use cameras for just about everything. So cameras see you, they follow you as you're training a route, they're following you when you're indoors and your GPS denied. The cameras are used to localize indoors to follow a route over and over, and we'll show a little bit more on that as well.

In terms of specs, max payload 500 pounds or 226 kilos roughly. That can be expanded with our Excel kit. So it's about 340 kilos max towing capacity our base model is right around 2000 pounds. And that's also expandable up to about 5,000 pounds with that advanced sow package. Max speed, we're generally traveling right around two and a half miles per hour. I don't know how that translates necessarily to kilometres per hour. But 2.25 meters per second would be kind of the high end standard is about 1.2 meters per second. So kind of your walking space or walking pace.

All right, so how do we do this? So the popup autonomy, if you can see that really little icon down at the bottom that's how we're navigating, that's what's showing up on the screen. So you have a little four arrow icon that you can click. You can manually move it around a little bit. You can put it in person, follow, that'd be the Burro behind the person, and it'll just follow you when you activate that. And you can also just put it in a row and navigate the row. From there that lower right hand corner, there's a little map icon. You can click that and that engages autonomous mode. From there, you have about five slots where you have five slots that you can click. You can train a route on each of those. You can make them run individually or make them run in series. So just like tracks on a CD player, how they're just running through and then they go back and they repeat the whole list. In addition to that, all of those routes can be pushed to the cloud, over cell. They can be named and stored, and then they can be recalled at a later time. So where this is really important is, when we get into nurseries where I might have a route that I'm traveling one day, the next day, I want to do a different route. The next day, another route yet. And so your ability to name and track those, and then be able to recall them late at a later date is really important in how you start to, to move from the pop-up autonomy to the more established guided work. And so as we develop in our, in our product that naming and tagging and organizing of routes, we'll also become more of a guided product as well where you'll have a desktop that you can preplan some of that as well. We follow the rows. We know what a row looks like. Within our training models and within the user interface, you have the ability to select which type of row you're in, which helps the Burro understand, okay, I'm in a table grape row right now, I'm not in a citrus row. Or if you go to a citrus row, then you just change that model. It's all right there on the user interface. And if you look at that little pink and green and yellow image as well, that's how we see and that's how we see and identify what we're trying to follow. So we call it segmentation. So you, you segment the canopy, you segment the edge of the row, you segment the traversable space, which would be that dark purple. And then you have your, your lighter purple, which would be, hey, that's a tote. I know what that is and I can't run into it. So that's how you see and stop for things, especially that grey person there as well. We don't want to hit anyone, so we know what they look like. We'll approach and we'll stop for 'em. We could get into all the other details as well, but, we'll, I think for the sake of time we'll just bump forward.

So, the goal again is to amplify work, amplify people that are working today and try to really drive an ROI on the equipment to then at that point, start saving on the labour that you have in the field. So carrying is really that first, that first task. We can carry stone fruit, we can carry citrus, table grapes, blueberries all of that and as well as other nursery products. And then when you get into the nursery, you start looking at towing. Do we want to replace a tractor? And the time that driver is spending on the tractor, he could do something else. He or she could do something else, be more productive somewhere else, and then we can save that money back on, on the labour sitting on the tractor. Beyond that we also have the ability to patrol a yard. So Burro already knows what people look like. So if it's out and about driving around the yard, why not have that thing send a text notification if it sees a person after hours when they shouldn't be there. In addition to that, if I go back, let me go forward. Let me try to do that again. We've got the ability to dock. So Burro will charge itself and it will make its way back to that dock and charge when it needs to be charged. And then it will resume its path, you know, and it's scouting after it's been charged. That bit of being able to dock and charge when you need is the next thing that ties into the items that we attach to a Burro. So in, in the video that you're seeing on the right, that's a grower that didn't have the people to put on a quad to spread ant bait. He knew that Burro could go row to row. You just put Burro in one row, you send it and it just goes row to row through the field without any pre-planning. In time, you have docking, you have row to row, and you have the ability to do other tasks potentially with that autonomy. So why not pair those two together? And so with that guided work that I kind of talked about before, a lot of that will bleed together and become directed work in the field where you have Burro that charges, it goes to the field, it knows that, hey I made it through 50 rows, I need to return and get a top off. Then from there it'll go and resume, but we're working that direction. We have all of the pieces. Now it's starting to put those pieces together. And again, the purpose of this slide is to really show some of the ROI. But that's all still to be discovered on some of these other use cases. Skip forward to the next.

There we go. So, if you really want to dig into some of the gains that we've seen in blueberries, as an example, we've seen roughly 25% bump in productivity day over day. And that's really between California and Australia. This is randomized data, so you don't know where it came from, but we can show you pretty linearly that, you know, on average we're seeing about 25% bump in gains. The lower percentages, if you look at that percentage column, those lower percentages tend to be your lighter fruit, your lighter crops, where somebody would be walking in and out of the row pretty rapidly anyway, so they wouldn't be walking back and forth, when you're comparing a Burro to a non Burro crew. When you get into the higher percentages, it tends to be your higher volume fruit. So somewhere a field where people would typically be walking a lot, they fill up their buckets, they need to walk out to unload 'em, or they fill up their totes and they need to walk 'em out quite frequently. All of those steps are what we're saving and that wait time at quality control. So if you want to look at blueberries and how they operate as an example, this first little bit is an example of how you can train a route and then share it to the rest of the Burros. The trailer was a ways away. We wanted to get 'em all to the field. So we shared a route. In terms of how blueberries work, typically in California, they weigh their fruit on Burro in the field. They put their tag on the tote, so they're tagged for their piece rate, and then they send Burro back to the trailer. And so for you guys a carriage. And so at that point you have an unloader and a quality control, and those are the two people who are really taking everything off of Burro, accounting for it, loading empties back on and sending it back to the field. And so that picker, not, not the manager, not the crew boss, none of them, but the picker is the one who says, Hey, I'm in this row. I'm going to train Burro to that row. When I get to that row, I'm going to press the forward button and Burro's going to know how to navigate that row. When I'm in the row, it will stop for me. If I don't need it to stop for me, because I don't yet have fruit. I move out of the way and it moves past to the next picker. Whoever needs to, to load it up, just steps out in front of it or reaches out and hits the stop button. Burro stops when they're done loading it back up, they press the reverse button and it's this conveyor belt just coming in and out of the field.

So switching over out of the field and more into nurseries. So nurseries we've seen really two key takeaways. One is carrying, and the other is towing. So in carrying, what we've seen really do really, really well is where growers or where nurseries, sorry, will have conveyor belts that they set up on occasion. That, that conveyor belt, it takes time to set up, it takes time to tear down. It is a consistent motion, so your feed is pretty consistent, but it's also a huge red flag when you, when it comes down to safety audits. Where we have seen the conveyor belt be replaced, we've started to see some really positive results and really solid gains. You're starting to see roughly about 120 day payback just based off of replacing conveyor belts. And that was just in the one process that you're seeing here. When you start to look at some of the other processes where you're going further distances around corners you can start to see roughly the same, better, sometimes a little worse depending on the application. The other thing to note with that is, that what you've seen there, and I'll click it again, this is under roof, so you're totally GPS denied. So Burro's operation, in this case, a hundred percent vision retrace. So this grower has two options. That's a really nice corridor. It's basically a row. They could put it in row, follow and have burrow follow that row. Since they have a little bit of a gap in a vestibule moving across the corridor, it kind of loses that row. So it would stop. So instead they've just trained it. They said, I want to start here. I want to end over there. I'm going to train three or four or five Burros all in that row, and they're just going to keep moving. In addition to that, the guy who's receiving the product at the other end, he can also do other tasks that he otherwise wouldn't. So in the case of some citrus growers, they want to take that plant out of the pot. Put it in a sock, then take that and put it back in the pot. That's an added motion that typically with a conveyor belt, everything's just coming. They're just moving it onto a rack. Now that you have a little bit of play, a little bit of downtime, that person can do another task. In addition, the other guy that's loading, he's also doing other tasks, prepping that, those plants to bring them out, things like that.

And then you get into strawberries. This would be another case where these guys were basically a chain gang, handing plants down the line. Now they don't have to do that. Then to advance past that, our advanced tow package is something that we're really proud of, and it's, it's started we're about three weeks into our first user. It is already proven itself, and it's something that, that we're taking orders for now, for delivery later in the year. With that, that is the three x battery capacity. It's a higher capacity charger, so that charger will maintain, it's about an eight to 10 hour charge cycle standard. When you add the batteries, you need a bigger charger to, to maintain that eight to 10 hour charge cycle. In addition to that, you have LiDAR mounted on top. I'm driving a truck down the freeway with my tractor on the back. I need to look further in advance so that trailer doesn't start wagging me. And so the LiDAR does the same thing, that LiDAR is looking further in advance. I have about 5,000 pounds on the back of Burro so I need to slow much more gradually. LiDAR helps us do that. In addition to that, then you also have counterweights on the bottom, so we can add a little bit of weight to Burro. Helps with stability a little bit. And you can also ballast your tires. So we've got growers and nurseries who have put water in their tire as well.

Tim, how am I doing on time? We okay? All right. I won't spend too much time on, on this one, but basically what we're trying to point towards is our ability to move towards that, that Wally character that we were talking about before. It's kind of a silly pictorial that we use for now versus Wally later. But the goal is to be able to provide the autonomy before you can do any of the dexterity or any of the fancy work that a lot of investment is put into these days, such as crop counting, such as soil monitoring, such as you name it. You first have to have that mobility. So our drive is to have that mobility, then start moving towards all of these other tasks. The ant spreader that I showed you a little bit ago, that was something that was powered off of our auxiliary power. We have a 24 volt unregulated power. You can connect to it, you can step it down to 12 volts, which is what that ant spreader was using. In addition to that, we're in design on a mower. We've done a pre-production with the one that you see here, the little green one. That was just to test the waters, get some feedback from our customers. Now we're chasing it full on. Also taking pre-orders for that. Our tow package, we've already talked about that. That comes with some added autonomy. The added autonomy would be that LiDAR integration. It would also be that the ability to share those routes. Name 'em. Run loops, run loops indoors, run lines indoors, things such as that. And then scouting. We have the ability to scout right now in table grapes with Bitwise, and that's all a turnkey package with Burro. There's a lot of scouting companies out there as well that all you need to do is put whatever that piece of equipment is on top of Burro and let it run through the field row to row. Green Atlas would be a perfect example of that. We have a customer here in the States up in Washington called Innovate, and Steve Mantle has been doing some awesome job, an awesome job working with Green Atlas pairing Burro with Green Atlas. We don't know each other in terms of an agreement or a relationship, but our autonomy and our solution work really, really well together. And then Bumblebee and Bloom X would be another example of that. So moving past that. Really to reiterate that last slide and to show a few examples. The image on the lower left for the video on the lower left is it is that Burro plus Green Atlas solution. But then also on the back is a soil optics rig. So he's doing two things at one time. He is counting fruit, he's also scanning his soil for dexterity or texture all of those different things. And then the video on the right is Bloom X. So it's a bio mimicking pollinator that as you travel through the field, it's vibrating to, to replicate the vibration of a, of bumblebee's vibrations as it flies, and that's in essence something to help with pollination. Earlier reports that we're hearing from Bloom X is roughly 10 to 30% bump in productivity in the trials that they've run this last year.

And then from there, really this is kind of a key goal for us. You have so many robots, so many different applications that we really feel that autonomy and mobility autonomously is an answer to a problem. The challenge though, with a lot of groups that come in, a lot of projects that come in and try to address problems is that they require change on the back end or not on, not on the back end. On the front end for the grower. We don't want to do that. We want to come in, we want to slot into a production system that's already in place, and that's what we've really proven that we've been able to do. Table grapes haven't changed their planting. Stone fruit doesn't change its planting. Citrus doesn't change its planting and nurseries are permanent structures that we have to slot into. So the goal is to take that autonomy, make it something that's approachable and put it into environment that already exists without having to saw cut and put varied lines in the ground or pre-planned to any extent.

So beyond that's really it. So I think we'll have a q and a at the end. Again, Cam, thanks for having me on. And looking forward to some questions and I wish. Thanks very much, Chris. Hand over to you. There you go.

Thanks very much. Chris was very interesting and as you say, look forward to seeing question answers. If you've got any questions that's you want to pop in immediately, feel free to drop 'em in the right hand side and the q and a tab. Cam, are we taking those questions now or at the end? We'll take them at the end, Chris. Okay, great.

So again, thank you everyone for joining. Cam Clifford, for those who joined the little late. Cam Clifford managing director of Agri Automation in Australia. We're part of the many of you would know me and we are part of the AME group with the background in mechanical equipment and vineyards and horticulture across Australia. I trust everyone can see a screen. Yep. Looking good. Thank you. So I'm pleased to present the GOtrack technology, which is part of the Agri Automation portfolio. We've been working with GOtrack for a number of years now in the automation space driving profits without driving the tractor. To introduce GOtrack, it's a technology developed and based out of Poland, EU. They're a very grower focused team in, in the GOtrack company. They are probably not what we know as the atypical ag tech startup, but more working from a practical development perspective. All of the key members of the team have a background in horticulture or viticulture, and a lot of their testing and refinement is completed on their own farms throughout their technology. So from a, from a productivity and practicality of operation perspective, we see the GOtrack product is something where it goes into the field and practically works for growers as opposed to coming from an ag tech or a technology space where you feel like you need an engineer to operate it.

So the GOtrack range throughout their product range, we have their vision steering system, which is what we call a Lin Assist Pro. We have the GOtrack Auto Drive, which is the full autonomous solution. We also have the e-spray computer, and we have the remote control function, which allows us to operate a tractor while the person's beside the tractor, but maybe on a planter or a, some something like a platform. Line Assist Pro. Line Assist Pro is a automatic steering system simplified. It works with infrared camera technology. It steers precisely without needing a GPS-RTK or cellular connection. So there's no need for route mapping or any pre-work. It is truly plug and play type operation. So the infra camera assesses and adjusts to the rowing canopy conditions, whether it's vineyard as we see it in this video playing here on the right hand side or in orchard conditions. This can be set up to operate in the middle or centre of the row, or it can be offset to the left or right side for functions such as hedging or under tree mowing. As we can see in the video here, this operator is working at a speed of around nine kilometres an hour in quite sprawled vineyard conditions without touching the steering wheel. So the system activates as you go into the row, either automatically or it can be manually activated as you see the operator touch the button on the left hand bottom corner of the video. The system then switches to full control of the steering until it exits the row when it releases the steering for the operator to complete the turn, and as they re-enter the row, they can either manually activate or the system can reactivate a definable number of seconds after it's re-entered the row. Where we see use for this technology is to enable the operator to focus on their task at hand. But whether it's under tree, under vine, mowing, spraying, whatever it may be, if you're having issues with driver concentration, driver fatigue, sprayer damage, anything where the operator needs to maintain complete vision across the machine, the steering system allows 'em to do so. Again, it can be fitted across any tractor might make and model, and it is a very non-obstructive system. So what we see in this video, the small box here along with the steering control on the centre of the wheel and some steering sensors with the camera on the front of the cab, is all the system consists of. So it is, it can be stepped back into and operated as it was before.

The applications for this type of technology is in trimming and pruning, slashing and mulching, spraying, and really any task that requires focus on the task at hand rather than staring in a straight line or between the rows.

It's one thing that's very unique about GOtrack is they are focused completely on permanent tree and vine crops as opposed to most autonomous or steering systems are largely focused on more broad acres or intensive horticulture for such as vegetable growing. Whereas the GoTrack system, their entire development is based on permanent tree and vine crops.

GOtrack auto drive. It is the most advanced system for autonomous tractor operation available commercially in the market today. We have a number of units operating throughout the Australian market and New Zealand market with 50 plus units working throughout Europe.

The system is very simple and intuitive in its operation. You simply drive once to record the path on the computer, and then from there, the attractor in the system will do the rest. Each path is saved as a separate name program, so it's then easy to pick the program for each day's plan tasks by the easy to use interface. The screen we see on the top right hand corner is the screen we see in the cab, like we know up from a standard spray controller in this industry. What you see on the below is the app that's used to activate and to monitor the GOtrack Auto Drive system. So from this we can see our path, what's been completed, what's to be completed. If it's in spraying mode, we can see the spray rate that's been applied, the spraying pressure, and how many litres are left in the tank. We can also start and stop from this app.

Here. We'll show you a quick video that gives you some overview of the safety systems that are included with the GOtrack Auto Drive system. This video is courtesy of our team and partners, Agri Automation New Zealand. So thank you for the video.

Now. Perfect. Yeah, sorry about that. Multi levels of safety on this machine. On the roof we have a obstacle detection camera. It comprises of two infrared cameras on the outside and an RGB camera in the middle, which uses artificial intelligence to detect humans and objects such as vehicles and animals that might run past the machine.

On the front we have a LIDAR sensor, which is very good at detecting hard objects or. Anything that might get in the way. And then the last line of defence is the bump stop, which you should never, should never need, but it'll immediately cut off the tractor at the moment that bump stop gets hit, and on the side there you'll see a couple of e stops, which is another way you can stop the tractor. So there's four levels of, of safety on the machine.

Okay, so recording a route is really easy. You just press routes, go add, we're going to do a route. And then once we press start, it'll remember everything that the operator does. So from now you can lift the hitch up or down or just simply drive off. So I'll show you what that does, and it's dropping bread crumbs and remembering exactly where you drove and exactly what you're doing. So if we lifted the hitch up at the end of a row, it'll lift the rear hitch up. And then once you finish your path, you basically press finish. Give the route a name, press save, and then you've got the saved route. So there you go. Go back in there. Choose test that we just did select and there's our route, and away you go. To start the tractor, you simply go into the app, press start, slide to confirm. The tractor will do a few checks, and after about five seconds, it'll, it'll take off.

So why GOtrack Auto Drive? The GOtrack Auto Drive is designed for simple intuitive tasks such as spraying, slashing, and mulching, designed to free you up to focus on difficult tasks where human intuition is required, such as pruning, mulch, under underlying work where it requires someone to take notice and to work around tree structures and so forth. It's overcoming staff shortages, also overcoming night spraying and so forth. The system can operate in all conditions. It is the only system commercially on the market today, which works with your existing tractor. It works with both avario transmissions and manual transmissions. So we have the system currently working today on Kubota and Fendt, New Holland and other tractors. You can control and monitor the auto drive from your phone. And as mentioned, it enables safer night driving or night operations. The auto drive retrofit kit components, so on top we have the obstacle detection camera, we have the GPS and 10 a array on the top of the cab. We have a steering control inside the cab.

The screen, like we noticed earlier in the video, we have a brake in clutch activator, an RPM regulator. On the front we have the front bumper and LiDAR system. We have emergency stops on the left and right of the tractor and on if we have an implement such as a sprayer and yes, you can see a small blue wireless box here which controls the sprayer or sends signals back from the implement to the control system.

As mentioned from a safety system, we have two. We have an infrared camera and RGB camera mounted on the roof of the cab. That can also give us a live video feed or take images of any obstructions to send back to the app. With the infrared camera, it also has an element of AI in there to detect people and other objects in front of the machine. Obviously, things obstructions like people are a much higher priority for avoidance than basic structure for a safety reason.

So in the GOtrack range, we have the GOtrack Auto Drive as we've just gone over. The GOtrack Line Assist Pro and the eSpray Pro for advanced spray control. On the front here, we see the LiDAR, the bump stop, and emergency buttons. We have a short video here.

So the system is suitable for many makes and models of tractors. These can be assessed as required. And that finishes the presentation. And thank you for everyone and we can back to you, Andy, for q and a.

Yeah, no, thank you both Chris and Cam. That was awesome. So I'm, yeah, truly impressed in trying to work out how I can get a Burro to, I don't know I've no idea what I would have any use for it, but just having one would be fantastic. So q and as, we haven't got any yet, but I'm sure there's questions out there. So if you've got a question, stick it in the chat or in the q and a section, if you've got something really long that you want to talk about, let me know and I can have a go at unmuting you.

There is one that, there is one there for Chris on the Burro.

Okay. How does it perform in tree rows that are bumpy and not perfectly straight? And what if there are weeds or a row crop? So there's upper limits to everything depending on how bumpy your, your rows are. You're going to have some issues but if it's relatively smooth the occasional bump here and there, I mean, we've run in, I wish I could show you a few videos of Burro tracking through mud where you've had drippy, a leaky irrigation line. We do make it through some of those scenarios. But again, there's some upper limits to that. Same thing with weeds and cover crops in particular. Generally, I mean, Burros only doing what it can see, so if there's something that is occluding its vision it's not going to have the ability to navigate that. So I hope that answers your question. I don't have specific inches or size of bumps or things like that. One thing that you can do to improve some of the stability is you can go to an XL kit, so you lengthen and widen your wheel base. So as an example in, in citrus we've, we did this in, in Sumo harvest. And they were able to put 750 pounds of totes. So that's 30 totes. It's pretty tall. I believe that actually showed in one of those videos as well. So when you go back and you, and you get this presentation, pay attention to that, that citrus video that shows up. Yeah, hope that answers that. That's good.

Thanks Chris. Also one on the price, question on the price for auto drive and line assist. So the auto-drive system is on a subscription basis here in Australia and New Zealand. So the broad spectrum pricing for an install of auto drive to attract it is approximately four to $5,000 depending on make and model of tractor. And from there it is 3,700 per month subscription, which includes all software and hardware updates into the future. Line Assist Pro. Again, subject to the tractor make and model, but between 27 and a half and 32,000 as a capital purchase for Line Assist Pro. One of the other questions was, is it cheaper or easier to retrofit tractors with ISO buss? Right now, today, it really makes no difference to us whether it has ISO bus or not. It does, however, enable a little bit more information to show on the screen if the tractor has ISO bus. Okay. Excellent.

There's also more questions in here. One of the questions was for the borough financial calculations, that was in US dollars. Correct. That was in US dollars. Yep.

And one of the other questions is when we, when might be we be able to see a Burro at work in New Zealand? I think you can answer that. Yeah, so I think there's, there is units on their way right now to New Zealand and we can loop you in with a team from Agri Automation New Zealand who can hook you up. They will be running some demonstrations throughout different regions and industry in New Zealand. So we can connect you later on with the team out of New Zealand. I believe the first ones arrive pretty quick, maybe a week to two weeks out.

There is a question about the permits for self-driving machinery and regulations if there are any.

Yeah, that's good. Sorry. I set up on the no there is, right now in Australia and New Zealand there is no current legislation related to autonomous operations, so no permit is needed. However, that said, it is up to duty of care for an operator the same as we operate today with machinery. So the system or all autonomous systems are not designed that you should set them going and head to town for the day. It is supervised autonomy. One of the advantages of the GOtrack Auto-Drive system is it is designed from a drive and repeat system rather than a Map type system.

Yeah. And there is just one more question that's popped up in the chat, which is about, so Cam, in your experience, how many units can one person oversee with the Go Track Pro?

Yes, thanks Andy. So the answer to that is probably subject to what task has been taken, something where you require to refill, for instance, a sprayer. We see the limit is probably somewhere around three to four units. Again, if that is something more simple like slashing or mulching where the task is simpler and it's not required constant service, then that number could be increased. However, how we see the intention to deploy multiple numbers of units in a spray operation is the units themselves don't necessarily leave the spraying field. They're then serviced, serviced by a nurse cart, which increases the efficiency. So, substantially.

Just double check the q and a. So, just I've got a quick question. What kind of feedback does, is transferred back to the operator like on the tablet or the phone that they're using while the tractor's going around? Does it give them location information if there's an issues or..., yes, that's good question, Andy. So from, you can at any time look at the app and see where the unit is operating. From a Google Maps perspective, you can see it operating in the field. You can see its current speed, its current spraying rate. If it's spraying how many litres left in the tank, how many kilometres or meters left in its path, how many meters or kilometres the original path was. If the auto drive system comes across an obstacle, it will then send a message to the operator on the app or on SMS and say, here's my location. I'm stopped for this reason. And now we are seeing a photo of the obstacle getting transferred to the app as well.

Okay, cool. And is that similar for the Burro Chris? It gives you a bit of feedback on what's, what's going on when it's, while it's out and bound? Yep. So for everyone on the call, when you go back and you receive the this presentation, if you look, there's the slide that has all the different icons that kind of describes the autonomy. There's a little teeny icon that shows our dashboard, our online dashboard. And so whether it's your full fleet or just an individual Burro you can really drill down into where Burro is, what distance it's travelled, what has it been carrying a heavy load or not. So there's some, some correlation to draw on the batteries all the way down to CPU temperature, and all of our stats. That's all available on that dashboard.

Yeah. Cool. So you've got two quick, two good ones. One is about insurance. If you guys have come across that. Cam, is that something that you've had? So I think the question is, yeah, does an insurer still cover or cover an autonomous machine? Yes. There, there is dependent on the insurer. Some insurers are more advanced in their cover of this type of equipment. Again, to repeat the GOtrack system in the sense that is a drive and repeat type system rather than a map system, makes quite a large difference in this respect because it's not a desktop type operation where someone hasn't been in the field. The GOtrack auto drive is two centimetres accurate and it will, beyond 30 centimetres off its path, it will immediately stop and send an alert so it can't leave its path. So from, from a safety perspective, that is a much safer operation than a sense where a path is mapped out from a desktop where they're not necessarily aware of the conditions or obstacles in the field, which it might come across.

Yeah. Cool. And so then from, Ben's got a question and is what are the, in regards to spiderwebs, et cetera, growing throughout the season, can that interfere with either equipment? So it's come down to the camera? Yeah, that's good. That's one of the major steps for the system has made in the last six months is moving to the extra cameras and the obstacle detection system because it's allowed us to reduce the reliance on the LiDAR camera, which has then enabled us to work in multiple canopy conditions. So it's especially seen when we think about a operation such as fruit growing, where your canopy structure changes majorly through the season with the fruit load coming on the branches and then dropping down into the row and causing that obstacle. Earlier in the piece we should say earlier in our trials, we, we seen that causing an obstacle for the LiDAR camera system. But now with the with the new cameras mounted on there, we're not seeing that the same as what we've seen in the Line Assist Pro system.

So to speak on the Burro, from the Burro perspective, we have not yet been in a scenario where you have webs that basically form a cape over your equipment. I've been in those fields and it's, it's pretty crazy. But in typical harvest situations you don't have that as an issue. At the same time as we get down into other tasks throughout the season where you're not in normal harvest season, it's fall. There's a lot of spiders out. We just haven't been in that scenario yet. But similar to what Cam was describing Burro would, if it's view as occluded, it's going to stop. And if, if it's in an autonomous application it, it will be sending a text notification to whoever needs to, to come rescue it, say, to clear off the webs. In addition to that, things like canes or branches or, or vines hanging down in, in, in the models that we have trained in and run in really frequently, Burro knows what that vine looks, coming down looks like, and it knows that to an extent it can traverse through that safely. Particularly if it's not, you know, occluded by a lot of vines, just totally breaking, its vision.

You got two. But to continue with you Chris, there is another question from Chris who's looking to go really big, because he'd like to know what are the maximum number of Burros that he can work, can work collaboratively.

There is no limit. So, basically so in terms of typically crews are running about six Burros per crew, and that's six to eight people per crew. That's one base station that everything is, is running off of. If your base station is high enough and has enough visibility to other Burros around it, it, there's no limit to how many Burros can relay and localize off of that base station. In terms of how many you can send routes to and have them follow and do the same route or the number of routes that you've catalogued, same thing. There's no, there's no limit to that.

Cool. And then back to you Cam, in the q and a, there is a question in regards to, could you elaborate on the spray pro model? What, what is added functions and then is this an add-on or different system entirely. Is it compatible with all sprayers or only AME sprayers? Wait, just unmute as well.

Thank you. So the e spray model is included in the auto drive in respect that that controller is a full auto rate controller in manual mode as well. It has added functions such as starting and stopping the spray nozzles autonomously. So at the ends of rows and so forth, it can change that. There's a number of functions that can push up to a spray recording program as well. It's probably getting fairly technical to dig right into it here, but feel free to reach out directly and we can go through some extra details. It is compatible with all sprayers, not only AME or FMR sprayers.

Cool. I'll just quickly click did you see the one there for Chris there, Andy? The maximum. Yeah, that's the one. Sorry, I've been jumping around. What was that one? Fuel use. So, we have a question in regards to any Oh yeah. Fuel use is do you see in between the normal running of a tractor in the same environment as with a GOtrack, is there any fuel efficiencies to using such a system? Not really. At the end of the day the system is operating the same as the operator would. The biggest saving for operating autonomous, autonomously is of course the labour saving and the, yeah, efficiency saving have been able to double up. What we are seeing is this task where they are quite a seasonal task, we are seeing operations able to reduce their overall staff count because they're not needing to step it up throughout the growing season, because they can deploy a GOtrack auto drive in this situation.

Yeah. Fantastic. I'll just, while we're see if any other questions come through, I'm just going to, oh...

Actually Andy, could I speak to that last one real quick as well? Yes, definitely. And we have another question as well yeah, cool. We don't have specifics on necessarily how much fuel is consumed in the typical harvest scenario where we're replacing tractors, pulling trailers, which would be like sumos. But for a comparison, if you're looking at number of acres that maybe you can cover in a day with a Burro, your cost per day to operate is roughly 62 cents USD per day, and that's taken off of some California pge rates. So that maybe gives you, I mean, it, you're under a dollar a day basically.

Cool. So there's one, one question in the Q and A, which is, we have a GOtrack system on a Kubota. Is Assist a feature that this or, is line assist a feature with this, or we'd need to add it to the system? I'm, yeah. That's cool. I do understand that one. And we can, so the Line Assist is a separate system currently. It is in their development pathway to have an integrated line assist in the, add to the auto drive system. But right now it is two separate systems.

Okay, cool. I'm gonna just take a moment while if we're, if everybody's thinking about any new questions, I'll just see if it refresh it again. So this is the first of series of webinars that I'm hoping to put together. So, everyone please keep an eye out for future and announcements about them. And the next one is on the 27th of July, which is from the onside guys and they have some software that helps growers meet OH&S and compliance requirements.

But thank you guys so much for your time and presenting. It's been awesome. I've got tons out of it and heaps of ideas and I'm sure everybody on the line has also got a whole bunch of yeah, thoughts on where they can optimize their properties and yeah, work practices.

So thank you both very much. That's good. Thank you very much, Andy. Just as a note, this will be recco, this has been recorded and link will be sent to everyone that attended, is that correct, Andy? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we'll be making this and if you guys are comfortable, I might get a PDF version of presentations that, or some further information we can distribute. There was a couple of people who asked about that early on.