Soil Sampling Goes Robotic
By Matthew Wilde , Progressive Farmer Crops Editor
On a cold, snowy November day last year, Steve Wallpe watched one of Rogo Ag's SmartCore autonomous robots scoot around his fields taking and bagging soil samples.
Two things instantly came to mind, recalls the Fowler, Indiana, farmer. He's glad it wasn't him pulling cores while shivering, and a robot with plenty of power to bore into hard soil at a consistent depth was doing the job.
"When a person starts out at 8 a.m. pulling samples by hand, they are gung ho," Wallpe said. "By 5 p.m., they're tired and not paying as close attention to make sure the probe goes down as deep as it's supposed to that can give inaccurate test results.
"This takes the human element out of it," he continued. "Robots take the variability out of sampling and give me a better result at the end to put on the right amount of fertilizer."