Raven Industries, Inc. a US-based agricultural technology company, has announced the launch of its new product brand and autonomous growth platform, OMNi. All of Raven’s intelligent autonomous solutions for the agriculture industry will be branded with the OMNi prefix and are part of one connected ‘ecosystem’.
OMNiDRIVE™ transforms existing tractors into driverless machines. It is the first farming application that allows farmers to monitor and operate a driverless tractor whilst seated in the cab of a harvester. Operated via an intuitive, tablet-based user interface, a harvester can offload on-the-go, then return the tractor and grain cart to a predetermined unloading area – all without a second driver.
- John Deere 8Rs Powershift and IVT (2010-current models)
- Case IH Magnum CVT (2014-2020 models): M250 / 280 / 310 / 340 / 380 (available in October 2021)
- New Holland CVT (2014-2020 models): T8.320 / 350 / 380 / 410 / 435 (available in October 2021)
- Remote command, supervision, and monitoring from any place in the field or another machine
- Autonomous task completion
- Manual or autonomous tractor operation
- Camera and radar to keep people, animals, and equipment safe
- Boundary setup/modification and predictive path planning
- Machine-to-machine sync and transfer precision controls for accurate, even distribution of harvest offload
Dominic Walkes, Director of Strategic Initiatives at Raven said “We understand the importance of quickly scaling and adopting new power platforms, farming applications, and implements into purpose-built autonomous agricultural machines. OMNiDRIVE is a significant growth platform and we are actively working with OEM partners to release compatibility on additional tractors and implements.”
OMNiPOWER™ is a self-propelled power platform that easily interchanges with farm implements. A farmer loads the appropriate implement to the unit and uses a computer program to generate a path plan for each field. The path plan covers every foot of on-field movement to sub-inch accuracy. It sets boundaries and retains obstacle information. The farmer launches missions in autonomous mode or can also control directly from the tablet. In either instance, no driver is necessary.
Currently, OMNiPOWER has interchangeable implements for spreading and spraying with additional applications coming soon. It will be available for order on June 1, 2021, with delivery in the fall of 2021.
“As we bring OMNi to market, we want farmers to understand that some of their pain points are now more manageable through autonomous solutions. OMNi solutions allow the farmer to trust the routine tasks to automation and focus on the important farm functions.” concluded Nick Langerock, Director of Strategic Marketing for Raven
