Farming is rough. A farmer is both a slave to his occupation and yet has freedom to do what he wants, in a way that he prefers. These days, people find happiness in a lavish and comfortable life, lived in urbanised areas while enjoying job security and the absence of hard physical labour. For this reason young people do not want to become farmers anymore: resulting in almost 60% of all farmers throughout Europe being over the age of 55. This combined with recent trends such as rising populations, increasing demand for food and labour shortage during seasonal peaks, the future for Europe’s agricultural sector is at risk. To cope with these challenges and increase productivity, farmers increasingly use heavier machines and resource-intensive farming systems, causing massive negative environmental impact such as soil compaction. In this project AgXeed presents the Autonomous Lightweight Agricultural Vehicle (ALAV). As a single unit or as part of a fleet, the ALAV is able to execute all operations throughout the cultivation cycle, completely independent and in a safe and efficient way due to robotics precision. Additionally, the ALAV stays under the irreversible soil compaction threshold, eliminating further degradation of the soil in comparison with conventional increasingly heavy machinery, leading to healthier crops and higher yields. The ALAV comes with a cloud based operating portal, is designed as a platform and can be connected with conventional implements already in use by farmers. In being autonomous, the ALAV eliminates labour shortages during seasonal peaks and generates tremendous savings for farmers in terms of labour and operational costs. The ALAV takes the first steps in shifting the essence of being a farmer from executing tasks manually to the monitoring and management of his agricultural business.
