A scaled-up version of SKAi (pronounced: Sky) the ‘retrainable, smart-camera vision system’, developed by Forfar-based precision farming specialist SoilEssentials, will make its debut at the 2023 Royal Highland Show.

SKAi, which was awarded a 2022 Silver medal in the coveted Royal Highland Show Technical Innovation Awards has, over the past 12 months, also been ‘trained’ to work in a new range of weed and volunteer plant scenarios.

SKAi utilises smart cameras, trained in the recognition of target plant species, to control an agricultural crop sprayer as it passes over a field. Initially utilised to target dock infestations in grassland, SKAi is now being put to work in high-value arable crops, such as spring onions and broccoli.

The new, scaled-up, multi-camera SKAi system, which is designed to control a bespoke, tractor-mounted sprayer will make its debut at the 2023 Highland.

Gregor Welsh, of SoilEssentials commented:

“We were delighted to receive the Technical Innovation award from the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society at the 2022 Highland Show.”

“The detection and management of weeds and volunteers in crops has long been a challenge for those hoping to use precision farming technology to guide their spray applications. The artificial intelligence we developed with SKAi means that the detection and targeted spot spraying of individual pest plants has now become a real and viable option.”

“Working in unison and integrating with existing GPS and sprayer systems, SKAi is trained to recognise and map a target species for individual treatment, as opposed to blanket spraying across whole fields. The system is revolutionising farming practices, vastly reducing agri-chemical usage (up to 90%), leading to increased efficiencies and better environmental credibility.”

“Since being awarded the RHASS Silver Medal, our first commercial customer for SKAi was a specialist onion grower in Holland. When potatoes are harvested it is not uncommon for some to evade the machinery and remain in the ground, these then spring up as undesirable ‘volunteers’ the following year. Our Dutch customer was experiencing significant problems from ‘volunteer’ potato plants amongst onion crops; but the scattered nature of the volunteers throughout the crop made them impractical to spray with a conventional system. This was, however, an ideal situation to bring SKAi into play as the grower can easily train SKAi to differentiate between potato plants and onion plants.”

The SoilEssentials stand at the 2023 Royal Highland Show will showcase, for the first time, a new multi-camera SKAi system, integrating 5 SKAi cameras across a 12m sprayer boom.

“We are extremely excited to showcase the SKAi system on a larger sprayer,” Dr Welsh continued. “In 2022 SKAi debuted as a single camera system mounted on an ATV-based sprayer of the type typically used for spraying smaller fields and paddocks. We have now successfully scaled this up to a tractor-mounted sprayer with SKAi technology controlling 24 individual air solenoid nozzles providing the ability to efficiently utilise SKAi on a much larger scale.”

The SoilEssentials stand will be on Avenue Q in the Agricultural Area of the Royal Highland Show.