Technical developments of the last two decades make it possible to develop autonomous tractors and implements for arable farming. The objective of this paper is to determine the effect of the dimension of autonomous implements on mechanization cost. Autonomous row crop cultivation is used as an example. A comparison is made between - a human driven tractor mounted row cultivator; a self-propelled one with driver and - an autonomous one. Different cost of navigation equipment and different levels of labor cost are studied. The cost of farm machinery is determined by their yearly use, which is determined by either available area or machine capacity and yearly available working hours, the purchase price maintenance and repair cost, fuel prices, interest rate and cost of labor (still) associated with the farm operations. Results are: an autonomous implement can depending on the working width cover 130 to 1950 ha, while human operation limits this to 43 to 805 ha. The cost of a self-propelled inter row cultivator is in all cases higher than that of a traditional tractor. Prices for navigation equipment must be reduced by half to become competitive with human controlled equipment, when the cost of labor is only 10 Euro per hour.
The economics of autonomous vehicles
Wirtschaftlichkeit autonomer landwirtschaftlicher Maschinen
2003
8 Seiten, 3 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 2 Quellen
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Englisch
Springer Verlag | 2023
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