Farmers are being called on to help train robots to spot slugs and the damage they cause to crops as part of a ground-breaking trial.
Set to start in spring, it will equip the ‘slug sleuths’ with special rigs designed to improve the complex machine-learning algorithms used to identify the slimy pests.
The trial is part of SLIMERS, a £2.6m Defra-funded project to develop new management strategies to help farmers achieve more sustainable slug control in arable crops.
The new work will run in-parallel with another component of the project which analyses the distribution of slugs in arable fields.
This information will help the team to develop more sustainable approaches to the use of pellets by targeting only the patches where the pest gathers.
The SLIMERS project is now seeking support from farmers to investigate slug control using the application of biological agents (nematodes) with an autonomous robot.
Technical lead for SLIMERS, Dr Jenna Ross, says: “We developed the concept of autonomous slug control through the SlugBot project, funded by Innovate UK.
“This work enabled robots to identify slugs and then spot-treat them with advanced alternative biological control methods.
“These new trials will put that proof of concept to the test in real field situations. But we need farmers to use their skill and judgement to train the robot AI.”
Special rigs, equipped with the latest camera technology, have been designed and are currently being built by SLIMERS project partner, Small Robot Company (SRC).
Farmers will use these to mimic a robot moving through the field and direct the rig to the patches where slugs gather to devour the crop.
Thousands of multi-spectral images of slug infestation will be gathered and fed into the machine-learning algorithms that will soon be used to find slugs and treat them without any human intervention.
Ray King, lead mechanical engineer at SRC, explains: “Robots learn as they go- the more images we gather, the better they will be at identifying this important pest.”
Farmers interested in taking part are invited to join a webinar on 10 January, where Ray will give an insight into the technology SRC has developed and explain how the trial will work.
The farmer ‘slug sleuths’ recruited to use the rigs to train the AI will be paid to carry out the work and gather the data by the British On-Farm Innovation Network (BOFIN).
“Farmers who know their fields know where slugs gather and where the damage is greatest,” notes BOFIN founder, Tom Allen-Stevens.
“The work on patch treatment of slugs previously funded at Harper Adams University by AHDB and now being developed under SLIMERS has refined this by proving that other slug patches also occur in all fields.
“Targeting all these areas with slug pellets results in commercially viable and environmentally sustainable control. In practice these patches also offer the target areas for the robot to operate in, reducing the area they need to search.
“At the webinar we’ll explain how farmers will be paid to help transfer this knowledge to the robot AI.”
