Manitoba farmer gives tractor remote-control makeover
Matt Reimer, Killarney farmer, adapts remote-control plane technology to grain tractor
A Manitoba farmer has equipped a grain tractor with remote control (RC) technology that he now uses to help him harvest his fields.
Farmers in the prairies have been using auto-steering programs for years, but that's not quite the same as what Matt Reimer, a grain producer from Killarney, Man., is doing.
Reimer said after he received some cash from his parents as a Christmas gift, he decided to put the money toward a new project.
"As kids we had these RC aircraft that were a lot of fun," said Reimer. "They never lasted long, they weren't very expensive, so I was looking for one of those and stumbled across this autopilot [system]. The light went on and I thought, 'Hey, that could go in my tractor.'"
Reimer started tinkering and modifying that technology hoping to adapt it for use in his tractor.
"I've wanted to do this for years. I didn't know how I was going to control the tractor, I didn't know how it was going to communicate back and forth between the tractor and the combine," said Reimer.
Most of the necessary hardware and software in the controls is open-sourced and available for free online, Reimer said.
"People a lot smarter than me have been working on that essentially for free, and all of their discoveries and innovations they publish online," said Reimer.
The system works like this:
"We want to keep that combine rolling, so when it gets full, you push the button, the tractor comes over to wherever the combine is, totally on its own, and lines up underneath the loading auger, and you unload the grain into the cart. When you're done, you tell it you're empty, and then the cart turns around, faces the other direction and gets ready for the next pass."
There was a bit of a learning curve, though. With no computer programming background, Reimer took advantage of free online courses offered through MIT so that he would better understand the back end of the equipment.
Those lessons helped him fit his tractor with remote capabilities.
"It didn't take that long, but I had to write a small application that runs on a touch screen laptop in my combine to make it easy enough to use so that it was useful in the field," he said.
As of Thursday, the robot tractor had been used in the harvesting of over 324 hectares of farm land, Reimer said.
"It's been working without a hitch, so the proof is in the pudding," he said.
As far as safety goes, Reimer has installed a secondary kill switch that halts the tractor if the primary controls fail.
"When [the operator] pushes that button, it activates the springs and they pull that brake down real fast and that tractor comes to a stop in a big hurry," Reimer said,
Reimer said the technology has saved him about $5,000 in annual wages, but "it doesn't really put anyone out of a job.
"There's so much work to do at harvest time. I hire all the good people I can find, but the trouble is finding [enough] good people to operate things. So all we do is get more done," said Reimer.
Reimer said he doesn't have any interest in trying to sell the technology commercially.