‘World-First’ Unmanned Vehicle to Make Farming Smarter

The world’s first mass-produced agricultural robotic vehicle platform will change the way you farm, its makers say. Find out what it can do.

SMART farming takes a leap forward this month with the planned release in Australia of the XAG R150 Unmanned Ground Vehicle.

Manufactured in China and assembled locally, the R150 is being hailed as the world’s first mass-produced agricultural robotic vehicle platform, offering multiple operational modes for tasks such as precision plant protection, efficient spreading and spraying, intelligent mowing and transportation of farm materials.

Since the establishment of XAG in 2016, XAG Australia set out to be a different kind of company. One that not only offer the advance Multi-functional Agricultural Drones, but endowed with the mission of advancing agriculture that strives to build the infrastructure of agriculture for the next 100 years, and with every Unmanned Agricultural System, we strive to bring changes to the agricultural industry

XAG Australia sales manager Bryce Dimec said the local branch’s key business had centred on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) drone spraying as well as some aerial mapping.

“We have several R150 machines crated up in our warehouse already, but are just waiting on software before we can release them to the market,” Mr Dimec said.

“We’re taking pre-orders now, but expect that we’ll be able to take them to market around the end of June.

“The R150 is a ‘world first’ in terms of a ground-based unmanned spraying system, with the option of adding third-party attachments for slashing over tougher terrain or row seeding with up to 150kg of seed on board.

“It could also be a utility vehicle to transport goods from A to B.

“It’s all operated on remote control, using RTK GPS co-ordinates which offer centimeter accuracy as the machine moves around.

“This is a whole new product for us and there’s nothing else available here like this at the moment.”

The advent of the R150 follows XAG’s successful roll-out of its P20 and P30 drone technology for on-farm spraying.

“The P30 first appeared in 2018 after the earlier release of the smaller P20 and new upgrades of the P30 are continuing to be produced,” Mr Dimec said.

“There’s been high demand for the equipment, with an increase of up to 1000 per cent over the past two months.”

The R150 features an integrated steel frame with roll cage, adjustable ground clearance, water and dust resistance, four-wheel-drive, brushless motor and electronic parking brake system.

It offers a running speed of 1.2m per second with a load capacity of 150kg.

Victorian distributor Airpac Drone Solutions has been operating since 2019, offering services in drone spraying for vineyard owners, fruit and vegetable growers, in forested areas and in difficult terrain.

Co-founder Jaibin (Gerry) Li said demand for the P30 had been strong, both for product sales and the company’s contracting services in fertiliser application, bushfire rehabilitation, seeding for pasture renovation, spraying, aerial photography and mapping.

“We’ve also done work for Greening Australia and Landcare and we exhibited at the Digital Innovation and Smart Agriculture festival in Hamilton in May,” Mr Li said.

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