A field is a mappable environment with clear geometry and recurring work — which makes it one of the most obvious cases for an unmanned vehicle there is.
Mechanical weed control is gaining importance as chemical crop protection is scaled back. But hoeing is exactly the kind of work that ties up many hours on the same track again and again — in organic farming and specialty crops often by hand.
At the same time, the people to do it are missing. In specialty crops, seasonal labour is the bottleneck, not land. Anyone without enough hands leaves blocks unworked or reaches for the sprayer after all.
That field robotics has a role here is no longer a thesis: autonomous hoeing technology is being tested and evaluated in field trials, and the first machines are working productively.
For hoeing in row crops there are specialised field robots built precisely for the job. The FarmDroid FD20 is regarded as the market leader in Germany; it sows and hoes on solar power and navigates by RTK-GPS. Naio Technologies offers Oz and Jo for horticulture and row crops. These machines are comparatively light — the manufacturer gives the FD20 as 1,250 kilograms with standard equipment — and make gentle treatment of soil structure a selling point.
We do not compete with them. Anyone who wants to hoe row crops and nothing else will find the better-suited machine there.
A tracked platform comes into play where more is required than a hoeing track: pulling power and traction on soft or wet ground, payload for heavier implements and containers, slopes within the specification — and the option of using the same platform for other tasks out of season.
Hoeing, harrowing, mowing between rows — where traction and implement weight decide the result. In specialty crops with alleys where a tractor is too wide or too heavy.
Moving harvested produce, crates, material and water across soft ground — without a heavy vehicle having to drive onto the field. From PALLAS.150 upwards in pallet format.
Cameras and LiDAR deliver data on stand, gaps and growth on the same pass — from ground level, and therefore differently from the air.
Soil compaction is not a side effect but a yield issue — and it is hard to undo. That is exactly why field robots argue with their low weight: a machine considerably lighter than a tractor with its implement protects the soil structure.
A tracked running gear additionally spreads the load over a larger contact area than a wheel. That is the real reason this design works in the field — not off-road capability alone.
But to be honest: more payload means more weight. A larger size carrying a heavier implement is no longer a lightweight. Which size suits your soils is therefore a calculation, not a matter of taste.