The Field Roboticists

Aberystwyth University

Robots in the hills

We will show you an off-road robot autonomously driving on a track and across a field, then performing a task. The robot’s route is specified in (almost) plain English, with expressions like “drive across the field until you find a road and turn left”. This allows intuitive routes to be set, rather than relying on precise locations. Using its cameras, the robot can recognise the track and follow a given bearing across a field. In the field, the robot will either locate a sheep and drive to it (e.g. to drop a hay bale), or drive around and detect weeds.

Meet the Team

Our team is composed of software and hardware developers, as well as users of the technology. On the hardware side we design and build the robots and their various components. On the software side we develop new algorithms specific to the tasks, also integrating off-the-shelf software packages. Users of the technology are mostly working on land management, environment monitoring and farming applications.