Autonomous Range Movement Vehicle (ARM-V): Phase IIIa

Summary

Over the past nine years, MLA, HDT and the US armed forces have invested in the development of an unmanned vehicle, the Drover WOLF, to carry heavy loads across rugged terrain. A variant of this vehicle has been developed for the Australian livestock market with upgraded capabilities, including higher fuel efficiency, longer range and a drone landing platform.

This project is the third step in adapting the experimental prototype of the Drover WOLF vehicle to serve the needs of remote cattle and sheep stations. For adaptation of the vehicle to the Australian livestock industry, this project focused on developing:

• an autonomous, GPS waypoint, navigation controller
• obstacle avoidance
• longer range (and duration)
• the ability to operate quietly near livestock.

These autonomous vehicles can perform simple, repetitive tasks, such as delivering feed supplements, refuelling pumping stations and cropping fodder. Automating these tasks could improve labour efficiency and financial resources on livestock stations to focus on increasing productivity in other areas and expanding operations.

Objectives

The present project expanded on the capabilities of the Drover WOLF platform by designing:

• an autonomous delivery dry lick distribution attachment
• a vegetation clearance and flail attachment to clear fence lines and assist in the eradication of invasive plant species
• a low ground pressure kit to enable autonomous cropping activities on wet fields
• an automated engage/disengage hitch solution for remote pickup and delivery applications 
• a modular fiducial marking solution to allow precise manoeuvring in close spaces
• a livestock keep-away solution.

Key findings

The project provided a demonstration of a proof-of-concept prototype of the Drover WOLF vehicle performing functional tasks – specifically, autonomously delivering dry-supplements and autonomously picking up a trailer.

Some of the potential applications of these autonomous vehicles includes the ability to:

• distribute nutritional feed supplements and fodder
• gather information about soil chemistry and moisture
• refuel water pumps
• check fence line integrity.

The use of autonomous vehicles in feedlot operations could greatly improve productivity and increase their profitability.

Benefits to industry

There are many operations on remote cattle and sheep stations that are difficult to perform consistently due to labour constraints that a rugged, autonomous ground vehicle could enable and/or facilitate. Eventually, this vehicle would be able to autonomously distribute fodder, inspect fence lines, take soil samples and count livestock using a tethered multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle.

MLA action

Following the successful completion of this project, MLA intends to relocate the updated prototype vehicle to Australia for further farm trials and producer demonstrations.

Future research

To continue improving the functionality and productivity of the Drover WOLF, future work should:

• improve the robustness and reliability of the autonomous navigation capabilities
• finish the development of the proof-of-concept attachments designed in this phase
• expand the user, and control (communications) interfaces in order to facilitate the integration of third party developed attachments.